I play Skyrim on the PlayStation 3 and I am sick and tired of my horse being a 'hero' and charging into battle to just get itself killed. While on a horse I can press the 'Jump' button while not moving and my horse does a standing stance. I was thinking to myself that this action makes it so that the horse would know not to follow me or move to attack enemies. However, after countless times of my horse getting itself harmed and sometimes getting itself killed it proved to be a useless action. Personally, I use my horse when I am carrying a lot in my inventory to the point I'm almost over encumbered or am over encumbered but I need to reach a destination which is not a hold or not discovered; even if my destination is discovered and I am not over encumbered to fast travel I still prefer actually travelling than fast traveling to find and explore different things on my way. So that means anyone who follows in my situation makes the use and NEED of a horse more crucial than ever; whether already over encumbered or not because items may be picked up at destination meaning at one point or another they will become over encumbered. Because the problem then is that you're stuck, not exactly stuck, but close to it. There is no way to get ANYWHERE if you're left in the middle of nowhere, with a dead horse, and being over encumbered so there is no way to carry yourself out of there other than by doing that slow painfully over encumbered walk or doing the drawn bow walk / melee power swinging walk which both are still not as fast as a horse or spiriting. True that items can be stored in barrels, chests, etc. till I can sale items at shops or put away items at my house, but any item that is stored in barrels, chests, etc. are not always reliable and can result in you losing your items. *Not important, skip if not interested... [{This has happened to me before and it wasn't even related to a horse at all. On one hand there was a time I left iron and steel weapons that were useless to me at that point and I didn't care for in a random chest after a few in game days I came back to find that everything was still there. On the other hand however I had a bad experience with leaving items in chest, or any container for that matter. I had my housecarl with me when I was traveling on foot to a standing stone when we had crossed a bandit hideout. My housecarl and I killed the bandits and I was looting the bandits we just killed, I was than over encumbered and my housecarl didn't have any more space left to carry anything else so I went to the bandits treasure chest, unlocked it, and stored away my newly acquired full steel plate armor and came to find that an ebony warhammer was already in there. I just needed to not be over encumbered for a little while at least so that I can leave my housecarl guarding the chest so that they don't hold me up while I made a quick jump around the mountain we were on so that I could acquire a standing stone blessing and then go back to recollect my stored items. I decided to quickly just reveal on my map a nearby fort from where I was at the standing stone. There were a few bandits there, I killed them quickly, lightly looted them, and immediately returned to the chest where my housecarl was. It only took me a few in game hours to go and come back to the chest, and by the time I came back the chest was locked, I unlocked it again and the only thing in there was a Dwarven battleaxe and a few gold pieces.}]... If someone was carrying junk it wouldn't be a problem to just leave that behind, but if they are carrying valuable items it will be more difficult to just let them go. Anyone could always leave valuable items behind to risk losing them so that they can freely move and try to come back later to take them, but what's the point of the risk, time, and effort to recollect those items if all the items can be carried at once; again, why it is helpful or even sometimes important to have a horse around. The problem altogether though is that there is no way of avoiding my horse from getting harmed to getting killed unless I keep riding away from any enemies I crossed on my travel. This is not always the best option though because either the enemy needs to be killed for quests, items, or simply cannot be out ran like dragons. The WORST feeling ever to get when traveling over encumbered on horseback between destinations is when I get off my horse to kill enemies and my horse runs past me towards them. Imagine doing that long slow over encumbered walk towards the enemy to kill them with melee, or to get into archery or magic range of the enemy and your horse you dismounted far away just runs all that way past you just to get killed. The WORST feeling ever. The reason in the first place of dismounting your horse that far away is so to: have your horse far from the enemy so that you can have time to actually dismount your horse safely, not have your VERY IMPORTANT horse close to danger, or even not have your [censored] horse get attacked so it will be provoked and attack back. Also, that's the thing, most of the time the enemy doesn't provoke my horse and my horse is not even harmed, but yet my horse finds it fitting to go off and attack the enemies, sometimes stronger enemies (like dragons for God sake), just for the heck of it. There are so many reasons why having your horse attacking is the worst thing that can ever happen while traveling over encumbered in the middle of nowhere, other than losing transportation, because: my horse blocks my attacks because it is in crossfire between me and the enemy and I am typically over encumbered, because that is the only reason why I use a horse is because I'm over cumbered in the first place, so I can't just move around to attack from a different direction so easily and sometimes when I do manage to move a little around my horse sometimes moves around the enemy to where I just moved too and continues blocking my shots, making it so that I harm my horse rather than the enemy; my horse gives away my position because even though the enemy is looking for me they don't know where I am, making it so that I can still sneak attack damage them but than my stupid heroic horse charges in to reveal my position, and to again block my shots; I sometimes dismount from my horse far from the pursuing enemy because the enemy is strong and I want to hit them with range and keep pulling back in a cycle till I kill the strong enemy but than my [censored] horse runs past me and if I'm not quick enough to remount my horse to pull it away from the enemy my horse runs right into his death and leaves me doing that stupid slow over encumbered walk while the enemy runs towards me, and again I can do that drawn bow / melee power swing walk but it's not fast enough and if I'm not killing the strong enemy they are just bound to catch up to me and kill me; and my horse steals damage hits on the enemy and sometimes kills the enemy taking away any possible experience to gain. I use to get pissed off when my FREE housecarl would do the same thing as my horse, but then I realized that again my housecarl is SWORN to protect me so no duh they are not just gonna sit back while I get attacked by enemies even if I want them too. However, my 1000 GOLD PIECE horse's responsibility is to just taxi my fat over encumbered self anywhere I need to go, not to commit suicide and tick me off by stranding me in the middle of nowhere. I pay that valuable money for a means of transportation and it would be EXTREMELY helpfully to have a say in whether I want to have my horse do as I want / NEED or to just to have my horse get itself killed. There should be an option, like with housecarls and even mercenaries (although I don't know about mercenaries for I have never hired one) to command our horses to either stay, attack, run away, follow us while we lead on foot (in case we want to be battle ready while having our horse still around us at all times (this option would be helpfully to have even though by the looks of a trailer of Dawnguard attacking on horseback will become possible)), etc. Like what I mentioned in the beginning, it would be nice also to have that standing stance ability to serve a purpose instead of being useless as a means to quickly make sure while still on horseback that our horse would not run away or run and attack the enemy. To make the gameplay even out, if the horse was quickly commanded to stay or though the command options to stay the horse would automatically run away if it was harmed to an extinct; to make it so that it doesn't go from an attacking like a crazy horse to an arrow to the knee I'm still good just standing right here horse. Really, the only real problem and concern I have for the game is about this horse obedience issue and I hope this change is made to the game so that I and as well as others can enjoy the use of the horse much better. Please, stop having my horse kill itself.

Horse commands would be good. Also, giving them follower armor, (regen at low health) would also work.

However, you could always use fear spells on it to make it flee.

Or you could buff it with courage spells and keep it alive with healing spells.

Or you could use calm effects to make the hostiles not hostile so you can cut them down without a horse dying.

pointless spam removed.

It takes less time and effort to ignore a post than it does to post tl:dr.

pointless spam removed

pointless spam removed

If you aren't going to read the post and reply, why bother to spam?

meh, there only 1k gold, i dont really care if they die or not. you could just use fast travel to get rid of crap then come back and continue looting.

Why am I the only person who tried to help this poor person?

I don't like horses in the game at all. The fact that once you get one, it follows you around.

I eventually took Shadowmare out back and killed it. Now if there was a summon horse command like in Red Dead Redemption, well that would be different.

Until commands come out, when you map somewhere and your horse is there, ride with the horse to be a little ways off from your objective. It should stay there.

What did it for me was a quick map jump which put me in the middle of a bandit battle. Had to listen to my horse attacking while I got around. Made it hard to screen shot the battle either with the stupid mare getting in the way.

Yes well, following the advice of our moderators.

I still have no idea what the original post says, other than upset about horse charging in. I've tried a few tactics. First, not taking a horse with me. Obvious yes, I got tired of my horse and finally ditched it. Second option is to dismount far from your destination but not so far that you can't find it again. Also be careful not to dismount and leave him somewhere a stray bear or something may come by.

Also, My horses tend to run off, but what bugs me is when my horse just randomly falls out of the sky, nowhere near Giants.

Wow I thought my posts are long. So I read the first few sentences. I would have said paragraph but... The horses really shouldn't run into battle. They don't irl they really shouldn't here.

I updated my original post.

It's not too bad.

I mean the post you quoted.

And the OP could use some formatting maybe...

If people aren't going to reply to the thread, please stop posting off-topic spam replies. Several posts went away.

tl;dr, The answer to your problem is horse armor.

This has to be the greatest first post ever.
If I were you, I would just avoid horses all together. They are very slow and have almost no stamina.

Courage spells can help it survive too. Just saying.

What if you are playing a non-mage?

I heard about this and didn't think much of it until I made a character I wanted to kinda have a horse as a companion. I bought the horse, rode maybe a mile down the road and dismounted to kill a bear with stealth so I could go on. Horse ran up, engaged the bear and got itself killed. 1000G for five minutes (maybe) of horse ownership on a character that had to kinda work for that gold.

Seriously, this should be addressed in a patch. It'd just be a simple AI behavior tweak. Maybe buff the horse HP and HP regen rate as well, but most of all, get rid of the Leeroy Jenkins Syndrome they've all been afflicted with. It makes owning a horse a chore.

EDIT: Or, even easier patch tweak; mark player-owned horses as 'Essential'.

You should play Skyrim less and take more english classes to learn how to use paragraphs.