On a pie-shaped family farm in northern Colorado, lives a horse named Piper who has seen and done things that would be completely foreign to most horses.
She’s seen pyrotechnics, run down the streets of downtown Denver past the Brown Palace, galloped next to an airplane while it took off — and been in the Broncos' stadium.
“If you've been to a game on Sunday in the last five years, there's a very good chance that you've seen her,” Amy Bowers, Piper’s owner, told Denver7.
🐴 Denver7's Maggy Wolanske and Kaylee Harter took a trip to a northern Colorado farm to meet Piper and the Bowers family. Watch Maggy's report below:
Piper — sometimes mistaken for Thunder, the horse that runs across the field at games — has starred in promos that air on the jumbotron at Empower Field.
“Piper is our stunt horse deluxe that's done all kinds of crazy things over the last five years,” Nate Bowers, Amy’s husband, said.
Amy describes the gray, 19-year-old horse as affectionate, opinionated, and a horse who “likes to jump.”
“She is trained to rear at liberty, and liberty means that having nothing on the horse, that I can work with her, and rear is to mean standing up on her hind legs,” Amy said. “Five years ago, I got a call asking if I had a horse that could rear on command, at liberty for a filming project.”
Bowers didn’t know it at the time, but that call came from a production company that works with the Broncos. Ever since, Piper and the Bowers family have been on a wild ride.
“Every shot so far has been pretty epic and pretty amazing, once-in-a-lifetime type of stuff,” Amy said.
'Nailed it'
Piper was bred in Florida to compete in three-day eventing, something Amy describes as “kind of like triathlon for horses.”
Her special skill of rearing on command isn’t “super common,” Amy said, “especially strong enough and good enough to be able to film.”
Still, Amy said, it’s in her nature.
“If you see a horse go and play out in the field by themselves, they will absolutely do it,” she said. “So it's just like training your dog to do something that they naturally want to do as well.
“You have to be able to kind of put a cue in there, but they want to do it. It's something they enjoy, so it's not that hard.”
Some of Piper’s stunts were harder to prepare for.
“They wanted her running next to a plane while it was taking off. And it's not like you can expose your horse to a plane every day,” Amy said. “I was like, I think we can, but I'm not 100% sure. And she just went out there and was perfect and nailed it about by the third shot, they got what they needed and it was incredible.”
A family affair
Piper is just one of more than a dozen horses on the Bowers family farm, where Amy’s husband, Nate, was born and raised.
The rolling pastures, sprawling sunsets and rough mountain country set the stage for Nate’s career in training horses and running cattle commercially.
“It's pretty cool because there's no technological innovation that can beat a man with a horse and a dog up there… we actually just go out with horses and we do cowboy work with horses,” Nate said. “So that's part of why we have so many horses here.”
Nate and Amy’s daughter marks the fourth generation of Bowers to live on the farm complete with a lake where the toddler will grow up fishing, boating and doing all things “country life.”
“Oh, this is our sweet little slice of northern Colorado,” Nate said.
Amy and Piper’s fame, though, extends far beyond the idyllic Fort Collins farm — and beyond Broncos Country.
Amy and the horses on the Bowers’ farm have amassed their own following online, garnering more than 224K followers on Instagram under the handle @ahorsiegirl. On her account, Bowers showcases everything from life on the farm to competitions to Piper’s appearances on the jumbotron.
“A lot of times where people see a horse, there's a dream attached to it," Nate said. "There's this dream of whatever it is — of cantering across a pasture. There's a dream of jumping a jump. There's a dream of having it play at liberty where it chooses to be with you.
“And, like, Piper personifies that dream.”
For Amy and Nate, the journey Piper has taken them on is a dream come true, too.
“As a horse person, it's always just really fun to see my horses go out and do something really special and super big,” Amy said. “And to have so many people get to enjoy her in such a fun way — it's pretty fun to go to a game and see her up on the big screen like, that's my horse. It's pretty neat.”
