A horse is an animal. Of course my parents and I horsepacked every year starting from when I was 9 until I left the nest to get married, so I am partial to horses. They were our pets, our buddies, just like little children (and behaved accordingly, except that they weighed 1200 or so pounds).

However, I don't think I'd want to horsepack most places these days because you have to be so restrictive. Back in the 1940's and 50's, we were usually the only people out there except maybe for the occasional sheepherder or cow camp rider. Grass was always up to the horses' knees or higher and a night or two of grazing hardly left a dent. When we did an out-and-back trip instead of a loop, the grass where the horses grazed on the way out had already grown back three weeks later.

Nowadays you have to pack in all their feed, shovel all their manure out of the campsite (instead of the next campers at that site being us the following year, they will most likely arrive the same day), tie the horses to a picket line over rocks (so they won't paw up the vegetation), etc. Many more people, many more horses!