Page 32 - Speedhorse Canada Spring 2020

Baxter has trained the earners of over $1.3 million, including 1997 Champion 3-Year-Old Filly Fabulous Form, and multiple stakes winners ImaRebHotandCheckThisReb...
HIS FORMATIVE YEARS
Baxter, now also known both as Andy (to the old-timers) and Bax (mostly to family members), was born to Ephraim and Oral Andruss in Melbourne, Arkansas, in 1925. He attended Melbourne public school along with his two sisters, Lois and Della, and a brother, Lowell Dean “Diz.”
His uncle had a big farm with horses and mules, and Baxter would spend summers there riding Jake, the white pony his uncle gave him, and later, a mule named Jim. On Saturdays, the farmers would go to town “to buy groceries, they said, but we all know better than that!” says Baxter’s wife, Chris.
“The farmers would unsaddle their horses and leave them tied up, and Baxter and his friends would ‘borrow’ a couple and go down to the river and match race them, then give them a bath, cool them out, take them back and tie them up,” she continues. “The farmers probably knew, but didn’t seem to care.”
During World War II,
the Andruss family moved
from Arkansas to Vancouver, Washington, to work in the ship
1997 Champion 3-Year-Old Filly Fabulous Form, shown winning the QHBC Distaff Classic-G3 at Los Alamitos on Dec. 21, 1997.
32 SPEEDHORSE CANADA Spring 2020
yards, where Baxter also got a job when he was around 18. He worked as a cook, for the paper mill, and other jobs, and ended up driving an oil truck for a man named Charlie Work who had horses — including a really good Quarter Horse stud, Mister Terrific (Ricky Taylor-Legal Tender B, Hard Twist). “No one ever showed Baxter how to get a horse fit and trained; it was just something he figured out on his own and he got really good at it,” Chris relates.
Through that experience, Baxter met others with racehorses. “In the ’70s, I didn’t know anyone who didn’t have a racehorse,” Chris says. “It was kind of a household thing. When they opened Quarter Horse racing at Portland Meadows, you’d look at the program and they were all your friends — and Baxter was training most of them!”
BUILDING A FOLLOWING
Along the way, Baxter helped found the Northern Racing Quarter Horse Association. Anywhere there was a racetrack, Baxter raced. “When they first opened at Salem, Oregon, at the state fairgrounds, they had a racetrack there,” Chris says. “I think the first day they had Quarter Horse racing, he won all the races.
“Things were kind of rough way back then,” she adds. “In the win pictures, you can see the stadium and there were only half a dozen people up there. I think they were all so involved with their horses, they’d hang on the rail and watch the race and then go back to the barn and get their horse ready. It took a while for the audience — the betters — to show up.
“Baxter had such a following that all wanted to run horses, so wherever they talked about opening