Who can forget the tiny foal wobbling around on his spindly legs in last year’s Budweiser Clydesdale commercial during the Super Bowl? Stan played an orphan foal raised by his owner, who later trained him and sold him to Budweiser to be in the hitch.
But have you ever wondered where he is now?
Most of us would have been happy if this commercial, even though fiction, had been a lot longer. But in the year since, a lot has happened, both to Stan and to the Clydesdales’ story.
The commercial shown below is an extended edit, a deluxe version much longer than the one actually shown during the Super Bowl last year.
Tuesday was Stan’s first birthday. The first Budweiser Clydesdale born in 2013, and one of the most beloved in St. Louis, spent his first six months at home close to his mother at Warm Springs Ranch the big new Budweiser Clydesdale breeding farm in Boonville, Missouri.
By July 2013, baby Stan weighed in at 800 pounds and it came time to move him to Anheuser-Busch’s Grant’s Farm near St Louis. Now that he’s all settled in with the serious grown-up geldings, he’s now in training for the opportunity to become a member of one of the world famous Budweiser Clydesdale hitch teams.
He has another two years of training to do, if he can prove that he has the stuff to pull one of the Budweiser wagons in parades. Wait, didn’t Budweiser make a commercial one year about that?
Baby Stan and his caretakers at Grant’s Farm got together Tuesday to celebrate his first birthday. It included a wagon-load of treats like carrots, hay, and apples.
If all this sounds like life imitating art–or commercials, as the case may be–it’s hard to tell which came first, the commercials or the Budweiser mythic dedication to the care of their horses.
Who knows if Stan has someone to bond with like the romantic “Brotherhood” version of his life, but one person he’s getting to know at Grant Farm is Steve Adair III, MS, DVM, DACVS, Associate Professor of Equine Surgery at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in Knoxville. Dr. Adair recently took over as consulting veterinarian to the Budweiser Clydesdales and monitors the overall and individual health of the herd.
He travels to St Louis periodically to check in on Stan and the other hitch geldings.
As you’ll see in this video, he has his hands on the horses, and his input is valuable to Budweiser as an impartial evaluator of how the horses are doing.
We’re just 13 days away from the 2014 Super Bowl, and the Budweiser Clydesdales are scheduled to appear in not just one, but two, commercials during the big game. As always, Anheuser-Busch is tip-lipped about what the ad will be, but we do know there is a puppy involved.
We also know that actor Don Jeanes is back, in the role of trainer/companion. And we know that the puppy would be happy if a certain Clydesdale would adopt him.
Whether you are cheering for the Seahawks or the Broncos, we know you will definitely be watching for the Clydesdales. It just wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without them. Just have a hanky handy, and don’t miss it!
