Page 33 - Speedhorse Canada Spring 2020

Multiple stakes winner Ima Reb Hot, shown winning the Oregon Bred Juvenile Championship at Portland Meadows on Oct. 30, 1993.
Multiple stakes winner Check This Reb, shown winning the Malibu Beach Handicap at Los Alamitos Race Course on July 29, 1994.
a track or starting a Quarter Horse meet, they were all glad to see him come because he had so many horses. I think one time at Yakima, he had 40 head!” she adds.
BUILDING A FAMILY
Baxter and his first wife, Betty, had two daughters: Terri, who now lives near Baxter and Chris (his second wife) in Vancouver, Washington; and Susie, who lives with her husband, Will “Billy” Vincent in Libby, Montana.
Billy started working for Baxter
in 1970 when he traveled to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with some people from Libby who had Thoroughbred racehorses. “Coeur d’Alene was running hot and heavy in those days and I liked Quarter Horses,” Billy says. “That winter, Baxter had a fellow there breaking colts for him who broke his leg. Baxter saw me down there galloping horses and called my
folks to ask if I could come work for him. I was just a junior in high school at the time, so the Andrusses said they’d make sure I went to school. I wanted to go so badly, so my folks let me and I stayed working for Baxter until I stole his daughter [Susie] away from him and came back home. I took away his best help!”
“Andy was notorious for firing his help,” Chris confides. “Because he expected perfection from himself, he also expected it from his help and if anybody slacked off, they got fired. It got to be kind of a joke; I think he fired Billy more than any person, but Billy would just go away for a day and then come back like nothing had ever happened.”
Chris met Andy around 1971 through her father, who belonged to the Clark County Saddle Club Posse with Andy. “One of Andy’s breeders that he trained for, Ben Weiler, had brought his yearlings over for Andy.