Mudbray and their evolved form of Mudsdale have long been kept as pack pokemon, for there are few if any pokemon species better at hauling crops to market, or at moving more valuable goods along trade routes between cities or regions. Some consider Mudbray every bit as important as Oddish to the development of civilization; without them, it would have been virtually impossible to transport agricultural surpluses to build larger settlements, let alone to carry out any sort of long-range trade. But this theory is controversial, as others suggest pokemon like Donphan could easily have replaced Mudbray even in ancient times.
Yet if Donphan were an acceptable substitute, it is hard to imagine why anyone would put up with raising Mudbray at all. Although Mudsdale are obedient to their trainers, and can subsist off many kinds of soil, Mudbray are so reliant on the same nutrients as the grass pokemon whose products they will someday haul to market that some have doubted their typing. Worse, they often inadvertently eat dirt containing the seeds of Oddish, Sunkern, or other agricultural pokemon; records from early governments are filled with disbursements of food and replacement seeds from granaries, in order to compensate farmers whose own crops were inadvertently devoured by their Mudbray.
As humans domesticated a wider variety of pokemon, fewer and fewer farmers put up with the hassle of raising Mudbray, whose wild relatives have long been extinct; the arrival of wagons wiped them out in most of the world, and outside Alola, motor vehicles finished the job. But the remote and mountainous Alolans have long hosted species with few relatives elsewhere, and rely immensely on their Mudsdale for transportation; most tourists today know nothing about Mudbray's historic range, and imagine them to be a species as Alolan as Oricorio.
