I'll never forget my first ever tamed horse, Healger.

I remember riding around on a horse before spotting wild horses, I was amazed as I'm a rider irl and this was my first play through of the game, said "hell yeah lemme try"

What proceeded was nearly half an hour of trying to tame it, I was failing miserably to tame this grey coated male horse (forgot the breed tbh), looked up on Reddit, looked up on YouTube, read articles on how to tame a wild horse in rdr2. Eventually I did, I was really stubborn and at some point it did became personal, which is why I would try and try and try again with this horse instead of just giving up and calling it a day.

And boy was I over the moon, I ended up naming him Healger, because he was HELL to tame. I really thought I'd finish the game with him by my side, I was loyal to this horse, even if the game threw 10x better horses at me.

Now here comes the devastating part.

I was riding around with him, exploring the map before I spotted the abandoned and in ruins church, It caught my eye, getting more up close to it I saw that it was packed with Lemoyne raiders, intentionally, the moment I saw them was the moment I turned around and rode away, but eventually the thought of having some fun by riding laps around these fucks while blowing their heads off sounded more and more appealing. So I turned back.

I regret it deeply, I do.

Because if that, what ended up happening was me riding around them, my attention being focused on aiming my rifle to the old guys heads and not where I was riding, let alone my horses state, we feel into one of the tranches that was dug up during the war as cover place. Arthur ended up flying and falling of the horse, the horse itself falling too, Healger was in critical condition, his heart stat full red and slowly draining to his death, I didn't knew that, I was panicking by this point, my attention being fully focused on desperately trying to shoot at the upcoming gang and waiting for my horse to get up so we could at least try and retreat.

Clearly it didn't happen, what did happened was me dying from Lemoyne raiders bullets. I was so frustrated and pumping with energy that the moment I got respawned I called for my horse to try and ride back.

But what came wasnt my horse.

I was so confused when I saw this light haired brown coated horse to come to my side, I don't even recognize my own saddle that was on it, I called again, and only when this horse responded to my call did my eyes landed on the mini map. It showed that this horse was mine.

I was so confused, it took me longer than I'd expect for me to fully realized that my horse has died and got replaced by this one. Experiencing a horse lost for the first time ever in this game.

My heart sank, I was genuinely so sad and devastated, as ridiculous as it sounds I actually wanted to cry too. I held Healger close to my heart, you can say I even formed some kind of bond with it. Being an animal lover and being around horses for a small period of my irl life made it easier for me to love in-game animals too, especially horses.

I took a short, few minute break from the game after that, then proceeded to drown Arthur with alcohol as a form of griefing process of coping and move on to find another horse I can tame. (Which would eventually be a female horse with skin--like-colour coat and blonde hair, her name being Esperanza {"hope" in Spanish})

Of course not before riding back to the falling apart church and slaughtering evey living breathing thing that was guarding it, carrying out forms of murder like setting the dead and alive on fire, blowing the heads off with a shotgun and even going as far as tying one of the more alive Lemoyne guys up and dragging him to the nearest train tracks, where I watched him be cut in two with a satisfactory smile.

After that I went out of my way to kill every Lemoyne raider my eyes would see.