Not too often that someone parades a 20 mule team through town anymore - the insurance would cost too much.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:20MuleTeamParade_LA_1950.jpg
Mules have very mobile ears, like do donkeys. Horses have mobile ears too, but their ears are smaller, so you don't notice them as easily. All equines signal each other with their ears. It is easier to spot what a mules is feeling than a horse. It is like the mule's ears type in capital letters.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mule.jpg
Well matched pair of working mules:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PairOfMules(Color).jpg
We think of mules as driving animals and pack animals, but you can ride a mule:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samana_man_on_mule_2.JPG
Many people think of a mule as a work animal.
Some newly rich people like to show off their new found wealth. Their reasoning went like this: a working person has a working animal, what could I have to show that I am a person of leisure? (This idea kind of went away in the 1960s, but it was still very popular in the 1950s).
People learn what "normal" for anything is, and once they understand that, their eye is attracted by whatever is different. So show animals are often different looking - not quite normal. Odd details are often considered "flashy" (attention getting), as are splashes of different colors.
A horse whose neck is not quite normal, where the horse carries their head way high, is sometimes considered showy. I remember a woman who was proud of her horse with a flashy head carriage, I just thought that it looked different. We went riding. Her horse startled, threw it's head back and bloodied her lip.
She wanted me to exercise her horse by riding it. It was NOT a fun horse to ride. It walked with it's neck so vertical, that I could not see the trail ahead of me because the horse's head was in my line of sight. I had to lean back in the saddle to keep the horse's mane out of my mouth and face. (If it were my horse, I would have cut it's mane. To heck with the mane being showy, it didn't taste good).
Worse, this horse startled often, and when it would throw it's head back, it would hit me in the nose, head, or lip. I met several other people while I was riding, and several of these made comments like "Your riding THAT horse!" and warned me, that it had: broken someone's nose and their nose still wasn't right, split someone's lip clear through and it wasn't healing, and bloodied or bruised up people's heads.
I was also told, it had KNOCKED someone clear out of the saddle by throwing it's head into them. Someone riding with the hurt person, agreed to trade horses with them, thinking the fault was with the rider, and the horse knocked them out of the saddle WITH IT'S HEAD. Horses often throw people - but not with their head - so that is an unexpected and unpleasant surprise.
The owner of the horse remarked one day that she didn't know why people didn't like her horse, it was pretty, spirited, and had such an attractive look about it.
Remember this if you are ever to ride horses: "Pretty is as pretty does."
It is such an old saying, it hardly sounds like English anymore, but it a great truism. Don't care about how a horse looks. Care about how well it behaves and how smooth it rides. You can apply that to things other than horses too.
A good TV is not one that looks pretty when it is turned off. A good TV is one with a good picture and good sound. Every one knows this. That is why they are shown in the store turned on - everyone wants to buy a TV with a good picture, nobody judges a TV by looking at the TV when it is off.
Remember, you want good manners and an smooth ride.
Color doesn't matter. Odd traits don't matter, so long as they don't interfere (but they often do interfere). Different is not always good - but be aware that people often reproduce odd traits until they can be passed off as normal "FOR THAT BREED!"
Showy animals attract your attention because they are different from normal.
"Breeds" of domestic animals, are groups removed from the common gene pool. In horses, there are still wild (feral) horses. You can get them real cheap from the BLM, if you have a place to keep them. But if you want to ride them, you have to gentle (tame) them, and teach them to let you ride them (break them). But you can get them for breeding, and then tame their foals.
In cats, we still have farm cats, alley cats, and regular cats. But there are also "breeds" of cats. Cats removed from the common gene pool, into their own little gene puddle, where they are only bred with each other. They often look odd.
In dogs, the situation is so bad, that we have lost the common gene pool. (In America and Europe it is extinct, but other common gene pools exist in other countries, but dogs from the original common Euro-American Dog common gene pool, are extinct.)
In other words, what was common, became rare, and is now extinct.
We have regular cats in America - not all of the cats are "breeds" of cats (like Siamese, Persian, etc) - you can still get a regular domestic cat. But in dogs in America, the people who produce and sell puppies FOR PROFIT have dominated the market, to the point that all of our dogs are "breeds" of dogs, or mixes of breeds of dogs.
They are not dogs whose ancestors were never removed from the common gene pool, into their own little gene puddle. A mixed breed dog, is a dog who comes from more than one gene puddle. A regular dog never was separated from the common gene pool.
I seemed to have gotten off the topic of this post -mules. Sorry about the rant. I have gotten into this rant before. But what I like is gone - and I helplessly watched on, as over years and years, organized breeders and their lackeys systematically worked to take over the pet market from the public.
Look at this foal!
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