You are absolutely right about the difficulty of maintaining a horse over the long term!  Games usually gloss over or even outright ignore those sorts of details.

Not every character is necessarily stealthy, though, and horses are great for carrying heavy enchanted equipment back to town to disenchant it.  Or carrying your Campfire tents and firewood!

Hahaha! Good point! But, that's what minions and houscarls are for...too carry my burdens! I mod the heck out of my game so handy things like EFF allow me to have as many followers as I want and carry all the extra crap I pick up. Matter of fact, the light fighter play through I use is an Imperial Scout (well more like a specialist/assassin/troubleshooter...kill everything in blue kinda guy lol) at one point I was leading squads of 12 scouts to infiltrate/ambush any SC patrol we found on the road or assault and retake SC fortresses (CWO overhaul).

But, I could see, if I were say some metal bound berzerker, a mount would come in handy.....