How does a combat mount react when it suddenly can fly?

[Flambe]

We had a situation come up in last night's game that I want some opinions on, and if there's one thing these boards have, it's opinions.

The party was fighting a drake who had decided that flying away was better than dying. Our cleric attempted to cast airwalk on the Paladin's combat trained warhorse to allow the Paladin to give chase.

Is the horse smart enough to understand what just happened? How does it handle flying? Does the spell "teach" you how to handle the flight?

The party's leader is a sorcerer with fly and the cleric recently started memorizing airwalk. The party has a consistent source of these spells and the Paladin is trained in handle animal to start teaching the mounts if we wanted to make this a trick.

How have other DMs handled this in their games? This is the highest level Pathfinder game I've ever ran so I'm quickly running into situations I hadn't anticipated.

[Lincoln Hills]

I'd treat "fly" as a Handle Animal trick that must be trained; mounts generally have a strong aversion to heights and drop-offs and similar phenomena. The trick would include overcoming this fear, as well as new signals for 'angle up' and 'angle down'. As a side note, it would be possible, although not necessarily wise, to include a signal for 'do a barrel roll.'

Speak with animals could be used if the party is in too much of a hurry to take time with training, although the DC of requesting something that's ordinarily impossible for the animal to do would be fairly high.

[Tarantula]

Paladin mount's have an int of 6. Which is 1 less than some fighters!

Also, I am assuming the paladin was riding the mount? That means the mount moves on the paladin's ride skill. I would've done a ride check, using the same DC as "handle untrained animal in combat" for riding to get the horse to do something it is not used to. For using handle animal (such as with an animal companion, I'd require a "push" check.)

Additionally, the spell states: "Using a fly spell requires only as much concentration as walking, so the subject can attack or cast spells normally. The subject of a fly spell can charge but not run, and it cannot carry aloft more weight than its maximum load, plus any armor it wears. The subject gains a bonus on Fly skill checks equal to 1/2 your caster level."

I would rule as long as the mount knows how to walk, it is able to use the fly spell.

[Ximen Bao]

Depends on the spell.

Fly automatically gives the target skill in flying. So that handles that.

Air walk is not actually flying, it's a special kind of movement and the spell comes with it's own rules for this question baked in:

"You can cast air walk on a specially trained mount so it can be ridden through the air. You can train a mount to move with the aid of air walk (counts as a trick; see Handle Animal skill) with 1 week of work and a DC 25 Handle Animal check."

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/airWalk.html#_air-walk

[Reecy]

i want to say it crashes and explodes... but this is no Micheal Bay Movie!