Page 47 - 7 July 2012

HandS-on
SatiSfaction
it’s the process rather than the end product that Russell Harris finds ap- pealing—both in his career as a trainer, and as an artist.
by Diane Rice
Russell Harris has found a lot of career satisfaction through winning, placing or showing in more than 48 percent of the nearly 11,000 AQHA races his charges have run. Yet he admits he gets a lot more personal satisfaction from
his training career these days than in the past.
“I like the scale I’m at right now,” Harris said of his operation, which
he has honed from the 100-plus head in his barn at one time to his present dozen or so.
“In those early days, all I wanted was to get some horses like those great ones I saw—Charger Bar and the rest,” he said.
He built a massive operation and when training at his highest volume, from the mid-’70s to around 1990, Harris’s wife, Brook, ran their 125-acre ranch
in Lake Elsinore, California. There they kept about 200 horses, including two studs. Brook and 30 employees handled the day-to-day housekeeping tasks and readied the youngsters to move onto the track. With that much horseflesh to care for, Harris didn’t get to spend a lot of time with each horse.
Nowadays he starts the season with about 25 head, and by the time Ruidoso Downs opens on Memorial Day weekend, he’s sent about half of those home. “Now, I enjoy the hands-on work—leading them around and working with them in the stall and checking them over several times a day,” he said. “I really get to focus on each horse. I just like the horses.
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