by Chris Lomon

While the odds have not always been in her favor, Shanisty Andres has found a way to beat them.

She doesn’t come from a horse racing background, her early experiences in the sport didn’t exactly instill confidence, and she even left the standardbred world for a time, albeit briefly.

Although it doesn’t sound like the foundation for a successful standardbred racing career, for Andres, it turned out to be just that.

Her introduction to racing was anything but traditional.

It was, of all things, a Google search that kick-started it all.

Around five years ago, the Alberta-born Andres went online and searched “Jobs with horses.”

The internet expedition would lead her to the racetrack in her home province and eventually to the barn of trainer Dave Kelly.

Starting as a caretaker, Andres was given the chance to sit in the sulky one morning.

“The first horse I jogged, HF Thegreatpumpkin, was a runaway,” said Andres, a former gymnast, who coached the sport prior to making the leap to horses. “The first horse I trained on the track, I was supposed to go :30, but I went in :20 and I was heartbroken. But I learned and then I got it. The encouragement and understanding certainly helped a lot.”

Andres added, with a laugh, “Going off my first few experiences, I didn’t think I’d be here.”

But here she is.

Since 2022, Andres has been training standardbreds, her nomadic experiences taking her across Western Canada and into the U.S.

“I had become friends with [owner] Tammy Murschell,” Andres said. “Her father, Bill Collins, was a trainer and raced her horses.”

When Collins passed away in December of 2021 in California where he was training a horse called Marlons Magic, Murschell asked if Andres would be interested in taking over the reins.

She wasn’t sure.

“When Bill passed away, Marlons Magic was still racing,” Andres said. “Tammy said she needed someone to train her horse. In retrospect, she didn’t need me, someone would have stepped up to do it, but in that moment, it was a bigger thing. I felt connected to the horse through Bill.”

Fittingly, it was Marlons Magic, a son of Betterthancheddar, who gave Andres her first official training win, the milestone coming on April 1, 2022, at Cal-Expo.

Nine days later, the bay gelding was back in the winner’s circle at the same distance and same racetrack.

“What was really cool was that the races were a mile and a half,” Andres said. “The best part was that he wasn’t done. Luke Plano, who drove him for that first win, said he could have gone all day. This horse was never super-fast, and his last quarters weren’t anything wild, but he was an endurance type.”

So, too, is Andres.

Now, two years since that first win, she is enjoying a career-best year.

As of Nov. 15, she has 25 wins, 47 top three finishes and $134,385 in purse earnings.

Not that she would know any of those numbers or just how impressive they are.

Call it the inner gymnast in herself.

“I was a gymnast at a very young age, so expectations in life are already set high, where you are very hard on yourself, and you are supposed to be the best at everything you do,” she said.

“So, I don’t set goals for myself. I especially don’t look at my training stats because that can be disheartening after a bad week, which can knock you down and discourage you from going forward.”

Her band of horses are a different story.

“I do set individual goals for my horses,” Andres said. “Lifetime marks are a goal of mine, but sometimes it’s as simple as improving a final last quarter from the week before. I try not to look at the numbers too much. At times, they can hit you pretty hard.”

Sting as it may, Andres has learned to roll with the punches over the years, including a brief period away from the barns.

It didn’t take long for her to come back.

“My aunt got me a job line locating [determining the location of buried utilities, such as pipes and cables] and with the hours I was getting, I realized I could make more money doing stalls. I missed the horses, and I hated the job I was at. Once you are in the industry, you are in the industry.

“I came back and cleaned stalls for trainers Dave Kelly and Kelly Hoerdt – I was doing 70 stalls a day. And now, here I am, as a trainer.”

A happy one at that.

As for favorite horses, Andres pointed to a pair of pacers, Cease Fire, a 4-year-old pacing son of Vertical Horizon, and Daisy Corvette, a 5-year-old pacing daughter of Mystician, who top her list.

“I would say Cease Fire is my favorite,” she said. “I know everyone would expect me to say Daisy Corvette – she is just a nice horse and has everything going for her. Whereas Cease Fire has everything against him. I have fallen in love with this guy, unfortunately, for me. With this industry, you can’t really have pets, but that is what he is for me. He’s struck a chord.”

It wasn’t always that way between the two.

Their first encounter was anything but love at first sight.

“When I was working for Dave Kelly, who had just bought him at the yearling sale, I did not like this horse,” Andres said. “We had a big training day, and I always turn them out before they would train. We had him out in the paddock and he was the last one to go. Dave wanted him harnessed for when he came in and went to the paddock, I couldn’t catch him. I ended up doing join-up. I chased him all around the paddock and it took an hour to get him.”

So much for making a good first impression.

“Dave came in off the track and started laughing,” Andres said. “He said, ‘I guess I don’t have to train him now.’ So, that was my first experience with Cease Fire.

“I found out that Dave was looking to streamline some of his stock, but I didn’t have any money. I was training three horses for [owner] Tammy at the time. Dave asked if I wanted to lease him, and I said yes.”

Their connection is stronger than ever.

“He is still the same horse in a lot of ways,” she said. “He still has this switch, and he just flips it. He’s hot and he’s on his tippy toes.

“I did some fiddling with his equipment and then slowly built trust with him. Robby Scrannage drove him for me at Fraser Downs and he took him out to the track one day for training. Robby felt like he was in trouble, so I said steer him towards me. As soon as the horse saw me, Robby said he felt him gear down as soon as he saw me.”

She added, “I have worked with a lot of other people’s horses and sometimes you love them more than they love you, but this is very much a mutual relationship.”

As is Andres’ relationship with racing.

During a memorable year, looking back on the many successes is not an option for Andres, who also points to Crazy I M, now retired, as another beloved horse she trained and co-owned with Murschell.

There is, however, much to look forward to for the horsewoman who started out her standardbred journey as a groom in a handful of barns in Alberta.

“My slogan, as a trainer, is, ‘I want my horses to race as fast as they can as comfortably as they can,’” Andres said. “It’s all about moving forward for me.”

The next chapter of her racing career will see her head back to Cal-Expo.

“One year, I packed all my stuff up, took my dog, and headed to California by myself; I am not that kind of person,” she said. “But I am glad I did.”

She views her decision to become a trainer in much the same regard.

“I didn’t want to be a female in the industry with a man doing everything for me,” Andres said. “If I was going to be a trainer, I wanted to do it all — I’m not shoeing or driving — but I had to be all in.”

The trainer, once reluctant to take the reins, has lived up to those very words and beat the odds along the way.