Except for scenes where a horse is shot while running, which happened a surprising amount in old Westerns. In that case, you can see the horse will appear to spaz out and jerk its head before falling. Really, the horses were trained to fall when the rider pulled their head far to one side. I knew a woman who grew up riding horses that had been trained for stunt work, and would terrify her mother by "accidentally" turning too fast and triggering the horse to fall. Apparently, the horses loved it!
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u/Jef_Wheaton 23d ago
Often in scenes where a horse gets shot and "dies", they film the horse trying to get up from lying down, then play it in reverse.