The vibrant open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 is so impressively living and breathing, giving players the unique freedom and ability to do so many things at any given moment and to experience all the game has to offer fully. One such aspect of the game that plays into its living and breathing structure is the player's accompanying horse.
Arthur's horse (or horses) can be a significant part of the game the whole way through as the player continues to grow a bond with them by caring for and doing various things with them.
8 Brush
Arthur and the player get perhaps the most crucial horse tool near the start of the game when the first real leading horse gets selected. That, of course, being the brush that will get used throughout the entire campaign.
The brush is not used just for cleaning the horse, but an essential tool for bonding with a horse. To use the brush, walk up to the horse and hold LT/L2 and press the 'brush' prompt.
7 Pet
One of the simplest ways to bond with Arthur's/John's horse is with no tools at all, by merely just petting the horse, showing the affection that would be given to other animal companions like a cat or a dog.
Any horse who is calm around the player can get petted by the character, and the way to do so is just the same as with brushing, walk up to the horse holding LT/L2 and press the 'pet' prompt.
6 Calm
There is an insane variety of animals and creatures throughout the Red Dead 2 map, everything from legendary beasts to tiny creatures. The main horse of the player gets scared from a lot of these animals often, leaving an opening for bonding.
When an animal like a bear or a snake gets spotted by the horse, they will start to have a bit of a freak-out. To calm the horse, just target it with L2/LT and hit the 'calm' prompt, or when riding the horse, click the left stick until the horse is okay again, and the horse will bond with the character.
5 Hitch
Arthur and John cannot spend the entire time of the game riding the horse, but it can be a bit awkward leaving the horse in the middle of fields or dirt roads, so hitch posts are around every town on the map for horses to use.
For some reason, hitching might be the trickiest of the bunch for ways to bond with your horse, purely because getting the prompt to pop up for the hitch posts can, at points, be awkward. But, that is simply all it is, approach the hitching post of your choosing, and a prompt will come on screen to hitch the horse and voila.
4 Ride
The without a doubt simplest way to bond with a horse is also the slowest pound-for-pound way to increase the bonding, and that is to ride. Luckily, riding the horse a ton is a necessity for the game.
Arthur's introduction to the game literally has him riding a horse, and so right from the get go, the player is thrust into one of the ways to bond with the main horse of the character.
3 Lead
The ability to lead horses has far less of a purpose with the player's main horse, a.k.a the one whom bonding is important and desired for, and is better suited for encounters where a horse is to be retrieved for somebody else or even to bring a second horse into the player's ownership.
To lead the main horse, the player wants to bond with, target it, and click the 'lead' prompt. This game does not allow the player to hold the rope of one horse while riding another, with a way around this being to continuously whistle to the horse that the player is not mounted upon, making it follow the player, although this does not aid the bonding.
2 Feed
Nutrition can be an exhausting aspect of Red Dead 2, continually having to not only feed a horse, but the character as well, keeping up stamina and health, and desperately attempting not to fall underweight, but also making sure as not to eat so much that the character becomes overweight.
Feeding the horse uses the same controls as about everything else, target with LT/L2 when standing right next to them, and feed. Arthur/John can also feed their horse on horseback by toggling the inventory and selecting the food which they want to feed to them, the best options being stuff like apples, oatcakes, horse hay, and carrots.
1 Repeat
Doing each of these things once or twice will obviously not suffice.
To get quick results and to keep the overall health of a horse at a high, these actions need to get repeated pretty regularly, in between missions, and even midway through a long cross-map journey to reap the full rewards of bonding with them.