I often find myself hating to read Western novels. Oh, quite often such fare is the best place to find good heroes and bad villains in a struggle of good vs evil, a sort of morality play which, when well done, is not at all a didactic club over the head, and very often a well-told tale all-in-all, except for one thing: most of them feature horses that are treated as though they are machines, and not all that well-maintained machines at that. It seems many Western writers know diddly-squat about horses, having gained all they think they know from Hollyweird Westerns and other poorly-prepared Western writers.
Chaps my gizzard.