NEWS

Prep day is here for the Budweiser Clydesdales

Sara Nealeigh
Reporter
Washing the horses is a two-man job. One handler stands on a stool to reach the top of the Clydesdale while another scrubs from ground level.

CHILLICOTHE – Only a select few people get to be a part of the process of preparing the Budweiser Clydesdales.

When the horses are out on the town, they have their manes and tails done, and every piece of equipment is perfectly polished.

But getting to the finished product that the public sees on hitch days is not a quick and easy task. The handlers are the ones behind the scenes making sure every horse looks perfect.

"It takes about five hours to get ready on a show day," handler Rudy Helmuth said.

Show day for the group of horses starts Friday. Before the horses can be ready for show, they have to go through what is known to the Clydesdale handlers as "prep day" on Thursday.

Clyde, the Budweiser Dalmatian, keeps a watchful eye over the handlers as they wash one of the Clydesdales.

"We do about one prep day a week," Helmuth said, adding it usually takes five people the entire day to get all 10 Clydesdales ready.

Bright and early on Thursday morning, after an early breakfast and a short romp in a field, the horses were all individually clipped and bathed.

"It only takes about 20 minutes per horse, with two people," said John Fink, another handler with the hitch.

Each handler takes a set of electric clipper blades, which work on horses similar to an electric razor would on a person, and trims the hair on each horse's nose, throat, jawline, and ears as well as around its eyes and along the first few inches of the mane. This creates a more polished and streamlined look for the horses.

"They get clipped about once a week," Fink said.

Clipping them so often cuts down on the amount of time handlers have to spend on the task.

Then the horses were led out, two at a time, to be bathed. Handlers had to use stools that came up to about their hips when standing on the ground to reach the tops of the horses' heads when bathing and clipping.

The stools are a helpful to handlers because to be Budweiser Clydesdales, it is required that the horses stand at least 6 feet tall at the shoulder.

Other specifications for the hitch horses include weighing between 1,800 and 2,300 pounds, have a bay (brown) coat, four white legs, a white blaze (stripe down the front of the face), and a black mane and tail, according to the Anheuser-Busch website.

There are three hitch teams that travel the country for appearances. Like the hitch in town this weekend, each team travels with 10 horses, 7 handlers, and one Dalmatian. Three semi trailers pull all the horses, people and equipment from city to city.

"We travel about 300 days a year," Helmuth said.

And every stop along the way requires one prep day and at least one show day. However, only eight horses are used in the hitch at a time, and the handlers are always rotating two horses out for rest days.

But even after a long day of washing and clipping and cleaning, the horses still are not appearance-ready. The five hours spent getting ready on show day is all detailing.

"We'll wash the feathers and polish brass the day of," Fink said of the show day procedure.

Feathers are the long white hairs at the bottom of the Clydesdales' legs, near their hooves. Handlers will spend time washing and cleaning up the feathers to brighten up the white color.

The horses then get brushed over and have their manes and tails brushed and braided before they get hitched to the cart. While the horses are being carefully groomed, two handlers will be polishing the leather and brass on the horses' harnesses.

Once everything is polished and the horses are ready, the harnesses are put on, the horses are hitched up, and it is finally showtime.

If you go

See the Clydesdales starting at 5:30 p.m. Saturday on Paint Street as they deliver cases of beer to businesses or from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the Chillicothe Paints game.