Your Sims has various interactions with their horses to give them care and affection as well as teaching them skills, exercising them, or just goofing around. An unmounted Sim has these options on a horse: Affection, Care, Reinforcement, Saddle, Lead Horse, Mount.
The Affection option lets you feed your horse a treat, hug your horse, let the horse sniff your hand, pet the horse, rub the horse’s neck, or talk to the horse.
The Care option lets you brush your horses or clean their hooves. Both activities give your horse positive moodlets and help them keep their Hygiene up.
Reinforcement is where you verbally praise or scold your horse for an activity it just performed. This will alter the horse’s traits.
The Saddle option lets you edit the saddle, so you can customize your saddle or add more saddles to the horse’s set of outfits. This is essentially the “dresser” for horses. You can also saddle and unsaddle your horse here. Make sure to unsaddle your horse after a ride!
A mounted Sim has similar options, although you can’t clean a horse’s hooves while mounted, and you get a few more options such as Give Horse Free Rein, Dismount, and, if the Sim has a Riding skill of at least 7, Heroic Pose. The Go for a Ride option sends the Sim and horse on a random pleasure ride around the town or countryside. This is a good way to enjoy the scenery from atop a horse.
As usual, Sims with certain traits get additional options in interaction menus, based on their traits. Pets with certain traits will get additional options also.
Horses can interact with their Sims in ways designed to get the care and attention they need, and express their love of—or their displeasure with—their Sims. For example, horses can nuzzle or sniff their Sim, or bite, kick, or stamp at him. They can also beg for carrots, be petted, have their neck rubbed, or nicker at or follow a Sim.
Horses also have some special horse to horse interactions, such as horseplay.
See the complete list of New Socials in the New Simology chapter.
Riding Permission
Usually, only household members can ride the household horses. But when a visitor (or even an NPC like the Maid) is on your lot, you can click on them and give them permission to ride your horse. You then get a picker window so you can choose which horse that person has permission to ride. This is handy if you invite friends over for a day of trail riding, or if you want a highly skilled Sim to help train your horse.
You can also ask for permission to ride a horse that isn’t part of your household. But if you don’t bring it back, you’ll be accused of Rustlin’ and lose LTR with the household you borrowed the horse from.