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Horse Taming, also known as horse breaking or just breaking, is a method of habituating a wild horse to ridership.

Red Dead Redemption[]

Overview[]

Horse taming becomes available during the mission Wild Horses, Tamed Passions, when Bonnie MacFarlane provides John Marston with a lasso. In order to tame a horse, the player must locate a wild horse and either use the lasso to capture it or get close enough to directly mount the animal. The player will then have to break the horse to tame it for use.

Breaking a horse is done by staying balanced for a certain period of time on top of the horse while it bucks. A wide range of horse breeds can be captured and tamed.

For every type of horse you break, a deed can afterwards be purchased at General Stores. So if you see one you like, break it. And if it's broken or dead, buy the deed, use it from your Satchel to make it your horse, whistle and you get the same one again.

Horses cannot be sold and thus are only worth the cost of their loot, which is of low value.

At some locations, you can earn money by doing a Horsebreaking job.

Red Dead Redemption 2[]

Wild horses can be tamed from the beginning of Chapter 2 onward. In order to tame a horse, the player may either lasso, sneak up to, or run and jump up onto a wild horse.

After which the player must break the horse, which involves staying on top of the horse and preserving your stamina without getting thrown off as the horse bucks. Most horses can be obtained elsewhere in the world and have lesser stats than stable horses but a small handful of special horses are exclusive to the wild and must be tamed.

From there, the player will now have ownership over the horse and can choose to sell, saddle, stable or get rid of their new mount. Since wild horses do not and cannot have papers, they will always be sold at a discounted price.

Tips[]

Red Dead Redemption[]

  • To break a horse, merely move left or right on the left analog stick as needed to center yourself atop the animal. The exercise will conclude after about 40 seconds.
  • If Marston is hanging off of one side of the horse, left or right, move the left joystick in the opposite direction. Rinse and repeat, and the horse will be tamed.
  • Move the LS/L3 analog stick counter-clockwise at a steady speed until the horse is broken.  
  • An easy way to break any horse is to repeatedly wiggle the control stick left and right.
  • If you ignore the horse's movements, the background, and the top half of John, and just focus on his legs, it becomes rather easy. If his legs are tilting one way, lightly tap the left stick in the opposite direction to balance him out. Once equal just hold it there until the horse is broken.
  • Make sure to use the LEFT stick.
  • How hard it is to break a horse is determined on the number of stars it has. For example, the American Standardbred will be more difficult to tame then the Painted Quarter Horse.
  • In Multiplayer Free Roam there's a glitch that can occur on rare occasions in which when you travel to Beecher's Hope, there will sometimes be a couple of horses roaming around but mounting the wild horse will buck you off right away.
  • It is possible to steal a horse through a Horsebreaking job. This method gives no bounty. To do this once you have broken the horse instead of taking it to the stable, take it to a hitching post and hitch it, then a message will appear notifying you that the broken horse is now your trusty steed.

Red Dead Redemption 2[]

  • You want to move in the opposite direction of the horse in order to stay on, and it is important repeatedly press the button to calm the horse throughout. Doing this until the horse calms down should result in a successful break, after which the horse will always respond to your whistling if they are not agitated.
  • The best method to break a horse is to sneak up to them and then move in with either a run or your lasso, you'll likely want to use your own horse to get closer though doing so may alert them and cause them to run away. It's important to have lots of stamina reserved up or to drink a tonic to ensure you do not get bucked off.

Trivia[]

Red Dead Redemption[]

  • While breaking horses, both the player and the horse are impervious to fall damage, meaning that if the horse falls off a cliff while trying to buck the player off of its back, both John and the horse will take no damage. However, the player will still die if you slip into deep water.
  • All of the Horses of the Apocalypse in the Undead Nightmare DLC require taming before you are able to ride or hitch them as they are wild animals.

Gallery[]

Achievements/Trophies[]

The breaking of wild horses is associated with the following achievement:

Buckinawesome1
10 gamerscoregamerscore
Bronze bronzebronze


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