No ‘Tillie’

The top ranked 3-year-old filly trotter was not on display in the Oaks elims.

by Debbie Little

Three-year-old filly trotter Yo Tillie is four-for-four and looking for more, but, unfortunately, the Hambletonian Oaks is not on her dance card.

When asked if he was frustrated that his top filly — currently ranked seventh in the Hambletonian Society / Breeders Crown Standardbred Poll — can’t compete in the Oaks, co-owner/trainer Andrew Harris said, “I’m not; not in the least bit. It’s unfortunate. I wish she was, but I’m not going to sit here and dwell on what I can’t change. So, no, I’m just excited for the races that we are in. And to be honest with you, I don’t even think about it because I can’t change it. So, there’s just no point in me sitting there dwelling on it.

“So, it sucks that we’re not in a $500,000 race, that part sucks, but we’re now in every other race, so we just focus the energy on the ones that we can be in. We made her eligible to everything that let us supplement her. So, we got her into the [Kentucky Filly] Futurity. So, I think she’s in almost everything except for the Oaks.

“She’s in every dance after that. So, if everything goes well, she can go Aug. 3 to Kentucky [in the Kentucky Sire Stakes], then the Delmonica [Hanover at Pocono], then the New Jersey Classic, then, hopefully, back to Kentucky for the finals, then get ready for the Bluegrass Series and Breeders Crown and the Crossroads of America and maybe the Matron.”

Bill Pollock and Bruce Areman, along with Harris, acquired Yo Tillie late last year after the Harrisburg Sale.

“Life just has a way of working out,” Harris said of how Yo Tillie was added to their fold. “I went to Harrisburg to buy another horse. We didn’t end up getting the horse that we were going there for. I was talking at Harrisburg to Verlin Yoder’s son, and it came up that I could probably get something done on [Yo Tillie], so, I called Verlin on my way home from Harrisburg, got a price, and then talked to Bill and Bruce, and everything happened within two days of Harrisburg.”

As a 2-year-old, the daughter of Tactical Landing—Consolidator, raced exclusively in the state of Kentucky for owner/trainer/driver Verlin Yoder with a record of 8-1-1 in 12 seasonal starts.

But what you do at 2 doesn’t always translate to what you’ll be at 3.

“Well, I don’t think that there’s anyone that can sit there and say, ‘Oh, I expect them to be that good,’” Harris said. “So, I’d be lying if I said, ‘Oh, I expected her to be like this.’

“I’m the type of person where I’d always rather get surprised than sit there and have expectations and then get let down.

“Every time we’ve ever bought one of these horses, I always say, ‘If I can keep them the same as what they’re racing right now, that’s what we’re looking for’… but I’ve never bought one saying, ‘Oh, you know, hopefully it gets better for us.’ No, I always said we’re buying it because it’s going good right now, we’ve just got to keep it the same, and if it works out, great, if it gets better, awesome. And sometimes it doesn’t work out, it goes the other way, and that’s terrible.”

According to Harris, when Yo Tillie first arrived at his barn in January of this year, she was not the sweetheart she is now.

“When I first got her in, she was a little crazy, she was a lot to handle,” he said. “So, I didn’t know how she was going to translate, because I didn’t know if we could get her to get her lid on. She was coming off having two months off. She was super excited. She was an excitable filly, and I was a little nervous that she was too excitable, but by God’s grace, we found a way to keep the lid on, and she’s been absolutely perfect once we hit month two of training.

“Now, you can do whatever you want with her. You want to pull off the gate and get away fifth, no problem. You want to tell her to go, you can go. She’s just point and shoot right now. And that’s why, [coming from off the pace in her last race on July 19] worked out great because we didn’t want to just keep going to the front. So, you know, that worked out great because now we let her sit in, let her realize that that’s okay, too, and she was perfect about it, didn’t care, and then you tip her out and she knows her job. So, she’s just so mature that it’s just all credit to her and [driver] Todd [McCarthy] for keeping her out of trouble. But she’s just a really nice filly.

“I think she’s just matured so much mentally. I don’t think that there’s anyone that can take credit for her except for her. She just let it click one day and said, ‘Okay, I’m going to take this seriously.’ And she conserves her energy now, she doesn’t do anything crazy anymore. You know, it’s all on her. She just grew up. When she got into a routine she liked, she was like, ‘Yep, this works for me,’ and away she went.”

When asked if he thought it was possible to teach that maturity to a horse or if they had to find it themselves, Harris said, “Well, you can help them. You can guide them. You can lead a horse to water. You can’t make them drink.

“You have to give them nice early lessons as much as you can. But you know, if you look at Yo Tillie, she was on the front most of the time [at 2]. Every horse is different. You can’t fight with them to the point where it’s not working and it’s not an enjoyable experience. So, you have to do what’s right by your horse. Sometimes, a horse like Yo Tillie at 2, probably needed to be on the front all the time. She was so big and strong that fighting with her was probably just going to make her mad, and you’d probably just tick her off. So, there’s probably just a lot of horse management where you’ve just got to know your horse, but most horses can’t do what she does. So, most horses need to have nice, positive experiences coming from off the pace, and learn how to do it, and then you can play and shoot.”

There are many things that Harris admires about Yo Tillie.

“Her lungs, she can take air; she’s versatile,” Harris said. “She doesn’t have to have the front, she doesn’t have to sit there and be parked out; she can mix it up. And I think that’s what makes her so versatile, the fact that it doesn’t matter what post she gets, she can find a trip to work out, and good horses find a way to just make it work, because they overcome it with speed.

“Like [Saturday (July 19)], Timmy [Tetrick driving Jersey Slide] came out, was kind of pushing her, and she was kind of running in, and she got straightened out, then she just took off to another level that most of the other trotting fillies can’t do, and that’s what makes her special.”