I'm running a game, and I very recently just granted everyone their first tier in the Mythic system; however, something that I hadn't planned for came up pretty soon. Mythic characters, by their nature, can take and deal out way more punishment than your standard character, but for someone like the group's Cavalier, who has a mount that doesn't progress at nearly the same scale, this can pose a problem.
How can I ensure that the player's mount will be able to survive those epic battles, and keep it at the same level of usefulness to the party, without making my Cavalier's character over powered?
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Maybe I've simply grown a bit jaded over the years as a GM, but frankly, I think its the cavaliers problem to figure out how to keep his mount alive, not yours. After all, as long as the monsters/npcs are remotely intelligent, they'll quickly realize that taking out the mount will make things a lot easier for them.
Or to look at it another way, historically, armies understood that knights were a lot less dangerous when they were on the ground than when they were mounted. There were even incidents of knights drowning in what amounted to little more than puddles because their armor was so cumbersome. As such, it was often a tactic to simply take out the horse.
Now, to the extent that you want to feel "fair", I suppose you could limit the amount of aoe spells you throw out. Additionally, if you have an enemy foot soldier trying to chop down a horse, there's a decent chance that if successful, the horse could land on said enemy.
Finally, there's always the option of the good 'ole dungeon. Horses tend to be a bit cumbersome in tunnels and narrow hallways. Mounts can make characters much more powerful, but there's still a reason why lots of PCs never even consider them. They tend to be fragile and they tend to get in the way when the party has to go "inside". Ultimately, make it your player's problem (for the most part). I say "for the most part" because its just not fun to go into every fight knowing that the GM will simply target the mount. Certainly some enemies will fail to realize the importance of taking out the mount. Other enemies might revere horses (or seek to capture them) and thus will be hesitant to target the mounts, etc.
It seems to me that a "mythic" cavalier shouldn't be riding a horse anyway. A pegasus, or a nightmare, or any number of other mount-like monsters that would have a "mythic" feel as a mount.
Just let him upgrade.
We ran a very limited (2-game session) playtest of mythic, but I don't believe anyone had a mount\familiar in the game. We did have an NPC healer in the group who was not mythic, and she died almost faster than we could really react - so I understand your point.
Ultimately, my guess is that the Mythic book will probably include a system to upgrade a character's mount\familiar when the character becomes mythic. Otherwise, a class focused heavily on a familiar\mount would mechanically be at a huge disadvantage if the character became mythic and his partner remained mundane
In the meantime, try applying some of the creature templates to it to see if that makes it more survivable, or perhaps just attempt to adapt one of the mythic templates to the mount.