Stopped by a fort and dismounted, thinking it was a friendly place. It was however crawling with bandits, so I backed off a little. One of them then shot my horse (he might have been aiming for me, not sure), which ran inside. When I went to check what was going on, there were bandit corpses everywhere and my horse was viciously chomping on one. He just went stark raving mad! Killed each one in like two bites, and only left one alive for me to take down.

That can't be normal, surely. I got outplayed by my horse .

Haha thats awesome. Those horses can be really protective...once I saw a bandit on the road ahead, so I dismounted and ran up to fight him...just as I'm about to pull a finishing move, my horse comes out of nowhere and tramples the guy to death...scared the living crap out of me

I usually end up killing my horse because it does those things. I'm an archer, so I'll be aiming and firing at an enemy and then my horse will charge in between us to trample the guy and take an arrow in the butt. The horse will then try to kill me, forcing me to finish it off. If I leave the fight to the horse, it will often die as well. So my horses are all suicidal apparently and don't know how to stay the hell out of a fight.

The first horse I had (I think from Whiterun? It's like one of the first horses you get) was pretty weak and died in a fight against wolves, but my second horse from Solitude actually seems pretty tough. He even took a whole bunch of damage when he aggro'd a dragon who had landed, and once I was able to lure the dragon away and kill it I thought the horse was dead, but he was still standing a few feet away. So I'm guessing Imperial horses = the bomb.

Also, horse vs dragon is insanely epic to watch.

Hmm. Maybe I've just been getting the wrong breed of horse. All my horses have been from Whiterun so far . . . . must be crappy stock. I'll wait to give up horses completely until I've tried some of those Imperial horses.

Mine is all dark brown with white above the hooves. So I 'unno give those a try? They're the same price.

I've had the opposite experience with my horse. I bought the horse at Whiterun, mine is black and seems to be tougher than nails. It's stood up to dragons, taken a beating numerous times from various types of enemies, I've even hit him a few times when he gets in the way but it's still living.

Well if this is working as intended, it's a bit odd, and makes the game easier. Horses should flee when in danger, not charge headlong into combat like a rhino.