Better Tak’em goes from disappointment to delight for breeder Steve Mast
by James Platz
When Don’t Let’em filly Better Tak’em passed through the sales ring at the 2023 Hoosier Classic Yearling Sale, breeder Steve Mast hoped he would one day have the opportunity to bring her home as a broodmare. Her dam, Barmaid, had passed that spring, colicing after foaling the filly’s full brother. What he didn’t expect, however, was her return before the calendar turned to 2024. What was initially disappointment has become a blessing over the last two seasons for Mast and those connected with the filly.
“I’m just done selling yearlings, and I hope that everybody’s happy,” Mast recalled. “Yeah, a little bit let down, and yet, in her scenario, the last filly out of Barmaid, who had just passed away that spring, I’m thinking this is my only chance to attain and continue the bloodline. That’s what really got us started was Barmaid.”
Mast and his brother, James, are small-scale breeders in northern Indiana. Selling only a handful of yearlings each season, Barmaid’s offspring had routinely made it to the races and the winner’s circle. Six of the Cantab Hall mare’s first seven foals were starters, and five of them collected victories. Of that group, gelding Martini Show leads all prior foals in earnings ($309,176) while mare Swan’s Maid has the most wins (21).
Steve considered immediately adding the filly to his broodmare band. But he and his children – daughter Krysta, then 15, and sons Eric, 13, and Adrian, 10 – had another yearling they had acquired to train as a buggy horse. Circumstances pushed them in a new direction.
“There was a yearling sale in Topeka and this was aimed for buggy horses,” Steve said. “I ended up buying a yearling because every year I train a few yearlings aimed to the buggy. I bought a Guccio filly named Gucci’s Poet and brought her home. She was chestnut. I called the ISA (Indiana Standardbred Association) and they said she’s registered with the state so she’s eligible for sire stakes and the fairs. I had her a week before I got the call on Better Tak’em, and now all of a sudden yearling sales are over, I bought one for buggy and I’m getting one back for racing. The family and I decided we’re going to start jogging these fillies and we’ll just train them both for buggy.”
After breaking the fillies, Steve and his children began jogging the two young trotters on the roads near their Middlebury home. The sessions each afternoon consisted of a three-to-four mile jog around County Roads 18 and 43. The route included crossing two bridges and encountering road traffic in the way of cars and buggies. For Steve, who had worked as a teenager for trainer Jay Cross, the time each day with the horses was therapeutic. Throughout the winter months, the two fillies jogged between 250 and 270 slow miles over roads that were often uneven and bumpy. Steve and his children exercised the horses no matter road conditions or weather.
“We were building a foundation,” Steve said. “I will say my boys sometimes checked out the speed. I know they did because the fillies would come back sweating a little bit more than what I would have done.”
When the breeder called trainer Henry Graber, Jr. early in 2024 to check in on Classical Jane, another trotting filly he sold at the Hoosier Classic, Steve found a home for the pair. Graber, Jr. was happy to take them on and see if they had what was needed to be competitive.
“I told him I didn’t know if they had any racing potential,” Steve said. “This is like three weeks before the stakes payments are due.”
Graber, Jr. agreed to evaluate the freshmen and let Steve know if either of the fillies were cut out for racing. He immediately liked Gucci’s Poet, but Better Tak’em was a more complicated project.
“She was a mess,” Graber, Jr. said. “Her back end was just a little messed up, and we just kept working on it. We had a chiropractor work on her pretty much every week, and then she just kind of got better and better. She was really the nervous type. When he first started working on her, he could barely touch her, and she would shy away. Every time he worked on her, she got calmer and better, and she trusted him more.”
Between the chiropractic work and training efforts by Graber, Jr.’s brother, Elmer, Better Tak’em improved in the few weeks leading up to the staking deadline.
“I knew she was the real deal the first time she trained at Hoosier in the jog cart,” Henry said. “I think my brother Elmer trained her in 2:10, somewhere in there, and he came off and said, ‘This is the fastest trotter I ever sat behind this early as a 2-year-old.’ She just did it so easy. It just went on from there.”
Over the course of eight freshman starts, Better Tak’em collected four wins – three in Indiana Sire Stakes action – and finished second three times for the partnership of Henry Graber, Jr. and Eleven Star Stables. While earning $119,125, the filly faded late in the season due to a breathing problem. Surgery was performed in the offseason in hopes she would come back stronger in 2025. Better Tak’em was one of a trio of Henry-trained trotting fillies that dominated at Harrah’s Hoosier Park Racing & Casino. Miracle Maven garnered many of the headlines, and Classical Jane also won in ISS competition. Upon Better Tak’em’s return, the surgery appeared to aid the filly.
“The first three starts, I could see she was as good as Miracle Maven,” Henry said. “But then we discovered about her fifth or sixth start that her breathing issue was not… the surgery didn’t hold. She was, you know, just good enough to where she still won a few legs.”
In 16 sophomore attempts, Better Tak’em won four times, thrice in Indiana Sires Stakes and an open stake in October. She hit the board four more times and finished the season with another $197,576 on her card, making her the richest foal from Barmaid. Any horseman would be happy with those returns, but Henry believes the breathing prevented her from reaching her full potential.
“She had more guts than probably pretty much any horse that we ever trained,” Henry said. “M-M’s Dream probably had more, but for what this filly battled with, she made a lot of money for the issues she battled. If her breathing was 100 per cent, Miracle Maven wouldn’t have made $400,000 the way she did.”
When Steve sent Better Tak’em to Henry, the arrangement was for two seasons. The filly is now back at the place she was foaled, and she will begin her next career as a broodmare. Steve said he intends to breed the filly to Swan For All, Indiana’s perennial leading trotting sire.
“If she puts the guts in them, and Swan puts the speed in them, they’ll be talked about,” Henry said of the potential offspring.
When Steve sent Better Tak’em through the sales ring, he anticipated following her progress from a distance, as he had several others bred, foaled, and raised at the farm. The last two years were not part of the plan, but they’ve proven to be an unforgettable experience for the Mast family.
“She could have won three as a 2-year-old and I would have been ecstatic, I mean, I would have been elated for where she came from and what we did,” Steve said. “So every win that she put on I was just like this is just unreal, really, and a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
