Learn why trainer and breeder Bob McIntosh believes running with a herd helps yearlings develop into tough, competitive horses that take a winning attitude to the track.
That way of thinking has not only earned him an O'Brien award as Armstrong Breeder of the Year, but has now helped him gain induction into Canada’s Harness Racing Hall Of Fame.
Story by Bernard Tobin
Photos by Matt Waples
At 11:00 am on a mid-June morning, trainer Bob McIntosh is one of the busiest men in horse racing. With 100 head in training at his LaSalle, Ontario, farm, McIntosh jumps off one bike, passes the reins to a groom, quickly answers his ringing cell phone, and takes the reins of another horse standing ready to go a training mile.
Sitting just off to the side of the track are members of the CSX Stables, McIntosh’s long-time ownership partners, who have travelled up from Ohio to watch the Hall of Fame trainer put two-year-olds through final preparations for their freshman campaigns.
A seven-time Trainer of the Year in Canada, the 57-year-old McIntosh has schooled his share of great horses, including racing giants Artsplace, Artiscape, Staying Together, Camluck, Whenyouwishuponastar and Western Shooter, to name but a few.
But on this day at the farm, McIntosh and CSX have a special interest in the two-year-olds circling the oval. The vast majority of those two-year-olds are homebreds, owned and bred by McIntosh and partners, who have built one of the largest and most powerful standardbred breeding operations in Canada. In 2009, they registered 37 foals, placing them third in the country behind Seelster Farms (59) and Al Libfeld (41).
McIntosh says he and his partners, including cousin Al McIntosh and Dwight Stacey, got serious about the breeding business 20 years ago. “It was back then we were spending a lot of money on high-priced yearlings,” says McIntosh. “When you buy a high-priced colt, it’s the highest risk you can take because there’s no residual value if they do not pan out as racehorses.”
But the winner of 15 Breeders Crown titles had some ideas about how to manage risk and potentially increase returns. “I said, ‘let’s get a game plan together and retain the good race mares.’”
He was also itching to try some of his own ideas on breeding and raising horses. “There are a lot of great farms that produce great yearlings, but there are those that raise horses to look pretty. They’re hot-housed and they’re not rough and tough,” says McIntosh, who is a rare sight at a yearling sale these days.
The horseman now works to get close to 40 homebreds to the races every year and believes that encouraging a herd mentality is the best approach to making top racehorses. He says he and yearling manager Wayne Hauser raise horses to win – and to beat the herd, you have to run with the herd. “My whole philosophy is that they’re horses and horses are meant to be raised in herds. That’s the genetics of the horse,” he points out. “Once the mare has foaled, they’re never in a box stall again until the day we bring them in to break them as yearlings.
“From training so many horses over the years,” adds McIntosh, “I can tell when a horse was raised with maybe one other horse or raised by themselves, just by their attitude.”
They’ve probably been pampered, he points out. It’s likely they haven’t been challenged and will be tough to motivate.
It’s a way of thinking that’s certainly worked for the horseman -- Robert McIntosh Stables was named 2007 Armstrong Breeder of the Year, after all, collecting a coveted O’Brien award in recognition of their impressive success.
Over the past two decades, the McIntosh-Hauser team estimates they’ve raised about 600 yearlings, but admits they’ve never really counted. They do know, however, that they’ve produced three millionaires: In Conchnito (1:54, $1,084,918), Please Me Please (1:51.2, $1,033,155), Electrical Art (1:51, $1,010,568), and countless top stakes horses, including current Ontario Sires Stakes trotter Text Me (1:54.3, $521,286).
McIntosh admits that he borrowed a lot of his ideas from the late Norman Woodward of Stoner Creed Stud in Kentucky. “I had a lot of success buying off Norman. He had the same philosophy. When a lot of his colts came to the sale, their hair was a little sun-bleached and they had been running out until the night before he brought them into the sale. They had been handled, of course, but they weren’t babied and he raised great horse after great horse.”
Colts that McIntosh bought from Woodward included Squirter (1:53.3, $601,294) and Sunday Driver (1:53.2, $503,295). “I told Norman, when he was still alive, that he was my hero in the way he raised his horses. We always had a chuckle over it.” McIntosh also counts pedigree specialist Norman Hall and Dr. Moira Gunn, farm manager of Armstrong Brothers, as key influences.
For 20 years, McIntosh and Hauser have had a handshake agreement that puts weanlings under the care of Hauser, a retired fire-fighter who raised beef cattle for many years before turning to the horse breeding business. “He knows what I want done and he does an excellent job of overseeing the horses, making sure they are fed on time and keeping an eye on things,” says McIntosh. It’s Hauser who oversees daily feeding – with McIntosh’s own brand of feed – and all care requirements, from vaccinations to monthly deworming and hoof care.
The team’s 50 broodmares are foaled at Seelster Farms. They’re then rebred and mare and foal are sent to Hauser at his partner Karen Currah’s farm near Clachan, Ontario. The babies are weaned in the fall and then sent to Hauser’s home farm at nearby West Lorne where they stay until the following spring, before moving to a 100 acre farm just north of McIntosh’s training facility in LaSalle. Hauser currently has two yearling herds at his farm – 19 fillies and 19 colts.
Like McIntosh, Hauser believes that running with the herd makes horses tough and competitive, and that attitude carries over to the track. “If he’s the leader of the pack, the one that comes up to you first in the field, that means he’s brave and he wants to be ahead.” Hauser says Mr G (1:52.3, $961,000), an early home bred who was co-owned by late Detroit Red Wings enforcer Bob Probert was the first one he noticed that had to do that. “Even if they were just running to the pond for a drink,” he grins, “he had to be the first one.”
Hauser believes you can learn a lot about young horses by watching them travel with the herd. “There’s always exceptions, but if you have one that wants to be the boss of the herd, he wants to be the boss on the track,” he says. “They have a pecking order and if they’re at the bottom of the pecking order, I don’t like his chances.”
Horses at the top of that pecking order over the years include the likes of Whenyouwishuponastar, Canada’s 1996 Horse of the Year. “She was the boss,” Hauser recalls. Another horse who fit the bill was Artistic Pleasure, a winner of more than $400,000. “You couldn’t hold her as a baby,” he laughs. “We don’t halter them much as babies, just to trim their feet. These good horses, you can’t hold them -- they’ll run away with you.”
And when it comes to picking his favourites, Hauser is willing to put his money where his mouth is. “I bet them,” he grins. He often hitches a ride on race days with the McIntosh trailers that pass near his farm on the way to Mohawk and Woodbine racetracks.
A powerful broodmare band is also key to breeding success, and McIntosh certainly subscribes to that theory. “You have to have a horse with talent. No matter how they’re raised, they’re not going to be any better than what they are born to be.”
Looking at his own broodmares, McIntosh points to names like the aforementioned Artistic Pleasure, an Artsplace mare the partners retained after her racing days concluded. She’s gone on to become a top broodmare, whose offspring include millionaire Please Me Please as well as Artistic Wonder, a winner of more than $450,000.
Artistic Pleasure’s dam, Magenta, is one of the foundation mares of the McIntosh band. “We bought her as a yearling. She never did much on the racetrack, but we bred her back in the early years to Armbro Getty, a son of Abercrombie.” He won 10 of 16 starts before injury cut short his career. That mating produced the aforementioned leader of the pack, Mr G.
McIntosh says he also looks forward to the continued success of young mares such as Los Angeles, a Camluck daughter and winner of $289,213. Her first two foals have today earned more than $200,000 each. “She was a pretty good race mare and has turned out be a pretty good producer.”
But he admits that breeders have to make some difficult choices when evaluating broodmare performance. “You have to give them a chance, but if they’re throwing just ordinary horses, you have to sit down and look at it critically.” He tries to sell off 10 per cent of the herd every year.
On the sire side of the breeding equation, McIntosh relies more on his instincts as a trainer. He has, after all, trained many of the stallions he matches to his mares. Former trainee Camluck “really started to get the ball rolling,” he says. He also had lots of luck with Artiscape and Artsplace, two horses that earned him lifetime breedings for his training efforts.
Cousin Al McIntosh, one of the long-time partners, works closely with Bob when selecting sires. “He’s very good at pedigrees,” says Bob. “In the early days, we just kind of matched up conformation with the horse. Now we really pay attention to breeding. I tell him if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have to go back to plan A.”
McIntosh also admits that Camluck, the sire of 19 millionaires and total offspring earnings of more than $168 million, was also a big part of plan A. “I like to think in the early days, that I kind of got him on the map because he wasn’t getting any mares,” he grins. “One year, I think I bred 20 mares to him and he wasn’t proven. At the time, I said... I’ll look like a real genius or an idiot -- one of the two.’”
Lucky enough, of the two options -- it seems quite obvious he’s no idiot.