Honestly I think Oblivion's horses were better. They had first person support, controls were doable with WSAD, (skyrim [censored] its pants if you WSAD on a horse), and you could harvest ingredients. Also guards rode horses (haven't seen anyone ride a horse yet)

Now on to some specifics:

Horse AI is dumb. They will get hostile and chase anything for miles. Like if a gang of wolves attack you, well you keep busy for a bit and your horse fights one, the wolf might flee and your horse chases him for miles. Situations like that are frustrating.
Maybe you can harvest ingredients, maybe you can't all I know is that your so far back in the forced 3rd person it seems impossible. As an alchemist I need my ingredients and Skyrim killed that.
My horse can't sprint forever? Come on, he can't even gallop faster than the player so what is the point here?
You should be able to just leave your horse in a stable and he won't fast travel with you.
You can't really look up. I was trying to see something up a mountain but the horse limited camera shafted me.

First person support would solve a lot of my issues. I'll be looking for some horse mods after my first play through.

I love the horseback riding in this game. Idk about other people but the animations seems great, they remind me of RDR's horses. I've ridden a horse just about everywhere and they're great for making fast travelling faster. One flaw with them is you can't use weapons on horseback, which svcks sometimes when everything wants to kill you while you take a nice ride through the country. Other than that I've really enjoyed them so far.

They're too slow. I can run faster than all the blooming horses I've tried out. I guess I'll just be running everywhere.