I’ve got Shadowmere - the DB questline one.
It’s never died…and I’ve never given it a single thought as to protecting it during massive battles. It’s distracted DRAGONS for me…it’s tanked 3 to 4 Stormcloaks during fort raids while I picked them off with my bow, it owned a frickin sabre cat for crying out loud.
I wonder if it’s been tagged as essential?
I bought a horse when I was playing the first time as an archer. I never really had a problem with it. I think I had to load a saved game 2 times because it died. The horse was dumb and it would try to take on dragons and stuff but somehow, it would live through it. My archer might have been OP, at least it seems that way compared to my new character, the thief.
I DID lose the thing a few times while running around but fast traveling to a city would always warp him over to me.
My issue with the horses are that they don’t go fast enough. Both my characters have used light armor, and that might be the issue, but they seem to be able to run just as fast as the horse. Maybe they’re more useful for someone in heavy armor?
I keep hoping there will be a horse combat mod, but I hoped for the same thing in Oblivion.
When Frost was still with me, I’d sometimes come out of a dungeon and find dead things laying next to her, but never vice versa. Bears, a few bandits at least one dead Hagraven come to mind. The horse actually killed the Hagraven all by itself before I’d even seen one.
Random comment of the day: Since the Falmer are the formerly surface dwelling degenerate descendants of elves (“Mer”), my nickname for them is “Merlocks”. 
According to the Wiki, Shadowmere just has a lot of hitpoints & fast regeneration. Shadowmere will also respawn “15-20 days” after death.
Oddest thing happened to me the other day. I’m leaving Solitude, walking down the road, minding my own business - and a dragon corpse dropped out of the sky and landed right in front of me. It promptly burst into flames as I consumed its soul, and I was able to loot it for the standard dragon loot and continue on my merry way.
I’m guessing arteriosclerosis. What do you guys think?
It inhaled a bird or something down the windpipe, choked, and dropped.
They call that birdstrike, or FOD, in the aviation community.
My guess; it was fighting a giant and lost, then the “smack you into orbit” bug kicked in.
I’m sticking with my “not enough caffeine” thesis. It dozed off while flying, and broke its neck in the crash.
Or maybe it was fighting something with poison attacks and the DoT finished it off after it flew away at very low health. But that’s not as much fun.
Press alt. Or whatever you have your “sprint” bound to. They have a stamina limit though, unfortunately it isn’t visible to you. They’ll just stop sprinting after a while when they get tired. But it’s WAY faster than running on foot.
Another thing about horses that I don’t know if it has been mentioned, if you can get to one while you’re over-burdened and mount it, you can still fast-travel which you can’t do while over-burdened and standing on your own two feet.
I miss my first horse, the shaggy pony I bought from the Whiterun stables. He lasted a long, long time, and took out a lot of bandits. I lost him to a well-armed set of bandits in a fort, and his replacement lasted about 15 minutes before he decided to stand in a flamethrower while necromancers shot him with ice bolts. Stupid horse.
Now that is good to know.
Also, if you knock an arrow while you’re over-burdened, you actually walk faster.
I keep a couple of strength potions for that. The potion duration ignores the fast travel time.
True. But you also look 23% sillier, so there’s that to consider.
Yeah 
The guys behind Mount & Blade really ought to hook up with Bethesda. Lancing peasants in the face is already endless fun in that game, but imagine lancing giants in the groin !
That being said, I can live without horse combat. What I can’t deal with is living without picking flowers from horseback. It’s just super annoying to be an alchemist on a horse.
What!? C’mon Kobal2, stop bring a lazy-ass. Not being able to fight from horseback is stupid. Not being able to pick canis root from horseback actually, y’know, makes sense :p. Alchemists have to be ready to get down on their knees with one or more of these and get their hands dirty.
So I finally decided to buy a horse last night. I give the guy 1,000 gp he hands me the keys to my horse, I turn around and a dragon lands in the stables and pretty much focuses all his attention on killing my horse befoe I can kill the dragon. I owned the thing for like thirty seconds.
Wow. Hope you have good insurance.
The dreaded “acts of gods or dragons” clause…
Not for me it doesn’t. The potion allows me to fast travel, but wears off when I get there.