Silence of the Horses

Hi, Bethesda. It's me. We've never seen eye to eye, what with the gag-order contracts that you likely made more on than your sales for ps3 game units, incredibly buggy games all around... but y'know, I just love your work, anyway. You had me hooked at Morrowind.

A friend loaned me Skyrim, and I love this game. It's simply amazing. There are, as always, bugs that break the game like a fat kid with a box of Pocky, but what gets me is certain designs that make me wonder "Who the heck programmed this particular instance, and what illegal and mind-damaging substance have they put into their body?" For example, let us suppose for a moment that this were a modern-times game. I do not expect my car to abruptly attack a mugger. Y'know, in fact, if it were capable of doing so, I might disable that ability anyway; I don't want to have my car wreck itself while someone's trying to steal something like $5 from me and a handful of cards with expired accounts.
Therefore, it boggles me that in both Oblivion and Skyrim, my most expensive upkeep is buying new horses which seem hellbent on attacking any and every enemy I come across. At least in Skyrim the horses have some sense of self-preservation- if they've already pissed off the entire camp of necromancers, a pack of wolves, a bear and a dragon, and their health is something like 10% of its maximum, the horse will run away, leaving me to deal with the consequences of its stupidity. Henceforth, I believe it's high time my character uses his feet instead. Maybe I can find a way to have a horse whose first instinct is "Oh, shit. Better run." Maybe next time I see that stableman, and he says"What you want is a WARHORSE!" I'll just cast Soul Trap, double-cast my worse elemental attack spell, and toss his soul-trapped Black Soul Gem under the millstone in Ivarstead and let my character grind it while I head off to work for the day in real life.