This thread: Horses and hitching posts - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board, reminded me of an incident from my childhood. This was the late forties and my uncle lived in a small farming community. Local people still ocassionally rode their horses and/or wagons to town. My cousin, about my age, had a habit of “finding things” that weren’t lost and my grandfather had cautioned my uncle that he’d better teach her better, or one day she was going to start rustling cattle. A short time later my cousin came home leading a horse, bridle, saddle and all, saying she had found it. Apparently she had untied it from a hitching post, w/o anyone seeing her, and led it home.
I’ve always referred to her as my “kissin’ cousin” because she was quite attractive and flirty. I had a crush on her as a kid, even though my mother informed me that it was a no-no. She married at 14 and was w/ the same man until he died a few years ago. Quite a gal, my cousin.
Cute story. How old was she?
That reminds me of the tales my kids’ Grandmother tells of her childhood (she’s 80+). One family in their area had an old horse who was too old to use for working the farm. They allowed their son to hitch him to a wagon each day and pick up other children from neighboring farms to go to the one-room school house. The boy turned the horse out on the school grounds to graze until time to go home. Kind of like the Original School Bus. 
We were both born in '39, so she was 8-10 at the time.