Most Broncos fans who have attended a home game in the past five seasons have probably glimpsed her without knowing it — a horse from a family farm in northern Colorado whose rare talent landed her an unusual partnership with an NFL franchise.
The mare, named Piper, is occasionally confused with Thunder, the horse that runs across the field at games, but her actual role has been appearing in promotional material shown on the jumbotron at Empower Field. Her owner, Amy Bowers, told Denver7 that anyone who attended a Sunday game within the last five years stands a strong chance of having seen her. Nate Bowers, Amy's husband, called Piper "our stunt horse deluxe that's done all kinds of crazy things over the last five years."
Amy describes the gray 19-year-old as affectionate and opinionated, with a love of jumping — and what distinguishes her professionally is a capacity to rear while working completely free of any attached equipment, responding to a cue from her handler. About five years ago, a call came in asking whether Amy had a horse capable of doing exactly that for a filming project; she later learned the inquiry had come through a production company working on behalf of the Broncos. Amy noted that the ability to rear on command with enough consistency and power to be captured on film is far from typical among horses.
Amy frames the training as drawing out something that horses already do naturally on their own, comparing it to conditioning a dog to perform a behavior it is already inclined toward — the cue must be established, but the animal's willingness is already present. Piper was originally bred in Florida to compete in three-day eventing, which Amy likens to a triathlon for horses.
In the course of her work, Piper has encountered pyrotechnics, moved through downtown Denver streets past the Brown Palace, and galloped beside an aircraft during its takeoff roll. That last assignment was especially difficult to prepare for, since regular exposure to a departing aircraft is essentially impossible to arrange in advance. Amy said she went in with uncertainty about how Piper would handle it, but the horse performed without trouble, and the production team had what they needed within three attempts.
Piper is one of more than a dozen horses at the Bowers property, where Nate was born and raised and where he built a career training horses and running cattle commercially across the surrounding rangeland. The couple's young daughter is the fourth generation of the Bowers family to grow up on that land. Amy has cultivated a following of more than 224,000 on Instagram under the handle @ahorsiegirl, where she documents farm life, competitions, and Piper's appearances on the stadium screen.
No information about the terms of the family's arrangement with the Broncos' production company, or whether additional shoots are planned, has been made public.