What kind of car do you drive? It depends on where I am. In Ontario I have an old Denali that I do my Vet work in and I have a Ford F250 truck. In Florida I have a Mustang GT. I also have my own plane, so I don’t drive anywhere, I fly. Favorite dinner meal? Snack? Roast Beef and baked potatoes with lots of gravy floating on the plate; potato chips. What is your favorite track to race at? Delaware Ohio would be my favorite. The first time I went to Delaware to race was 2008 when we took Shadow Play for the (Little Brown) Jug and I trained him the day before. The track was like a carpet. It is unbelievable how good they keep that track. I like the whole fair atmosphere on an afternoon race card. I love the place in general. Meadowlands would be a close second. It also has a beautiful track with lots of speed there. What is your favorite big event in racing? Little Brown Jug, for sure. How often is racing on your mind? Probably too much. I woke up in the middle of the night at 4 AM last night thinking about racing. I'm a very hands-on person in terms of the stable I run and if I have one with problems it is on my mind more than it should be. I can walk away from it every once in a while, but most of the time it will be if I just go flying recreationally and not flying to a racetrack for a business reason. What is your favorite thing to do outside of racing? Fly somewhere. I also enjoy playing many sports. I played hockey in Orlando during the winter in an over 35 and over 55 league until the virus came along and I usually play softball during the summertime. That's all gone to heck now. I play the drums as well. What is your favorite sport to watch? Team? Baseball – Toronto Blue Jays. What is one thing about you most fans/bettors don't know? I used to have a head full of curly blonde hair when I was 16 years old. Most people wouldn’t know that because today I'm quite bald and gray. How about that you were born in England? When did you come to Canada? I was there for the first four years of my life. My parents were both British. I remember when we were sailing over on one of the Cunard lines, it was called the Sylvania. We got hit by a storm in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and everybody was sick on the boat except me. When we got to Montreal when it docked, I was so excited running around that I got sick from that, not from the rocking boat. I remember my mom telling me that story. What is one word that describes harness racing for you? It depends on the weekend. Last weekend it would've been awesome and this weekend it would've been shit. I guess interesting would be the word. It is very variable from day to day. How did you get started in the sport? I was about 12 years old. My parents had nothing to do with horse racing at all. In fact, my grandfather on my mother's side was a gambler and my mother hated horse racing as a result of that. The janitor at the school I went to on Prince Edward Island, where I grew up on the east coast of Canada, had a stable of horses. One day he just took me out to the racetrack at Summerside, which is still there today, and it went from there. What has been more financially rewarding, being a veterinarian or a trainer? The last 15 years or so, being a trainer. It has become my primary source of income, especially the last 10 years since I started going to Florida. I have a Florida license that I use for emergencies and to make sure what I do on my own is on the up and up, but I don't practice in the winter anymore. I just do the six months when I'm in Canada around the summer at the equine practice here. It is almost 39 years now that I’ve been doing equine practice and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Right now, it makes for long days for me. I'm just getting out of the barn now (about noon) and ready to go into the clinic for several hours. Then I go to race at night, so I don’t get home until late, but it is hard to give any of it up because I enjoy every aspect of it. You doubled your number of starts since 2014. What changed? Prior to that time I was a career veterinarian and I always had about three horses. I used to drive, train and shoe myself. In 2004 I had a 2-year-old named Astronomical. He sort of changed my thinking. Back then I was available 7-days-a-week to anyone who needed me as a veterinarian and it kind of controlled my life. Astronomical was a really nice horse. At one time had the world record for the fastest free-legged mile and he made over $700,000 Canadian. He was also the last horse to win the Little Brown Jug Preview at Scioto Downs until they've brought it back recently. I started spending more time with the horses and after that instead of two or three horses we started gradually increasing. We had Shadow Play in ’08 and ended up with 11 horses in '09 and it just sort of went from there. I had as many as 27 or 28 this year and now I'm back down to 21 or 22 right now. Typically for me 15 has been a decent number, but I got more into training young horses and really enjoy the 2-year-olds. The younger horses is probably the biggest reason my starts have increased. What is the best advice you've ever gotten about harness racing? I've gotten a lot of good advice from a lot of good, intelligent, decent people. The best is to keep your mouth shut and let your horses do the talking, and when you do well, be very humble about it. You have 352 driving wins and a solid record in the bike. Did you enjoy driving? Yeah, and I still do drive a few times a year just to maintain my "A" license. I have to have a physical every couple of years now to do it. I was actually going to drive one at Georgian the other night but after my son and I flew to Sarnia on Saturday afternoon to race four babies, after I landed I had some issue with either my sinuses or Eustachian tubes and it was really bad Sunday morning. So I went to the hospital Sunday morning because they thought it might be an aneurism. But I had a CAT scan done and it is not. So I still enjoy driving, but it has obviously become a young man's game now. I still qualify all of our babies at least the first time because if you give it to the kids they sometimes go down the road with them whereas I use the first of two qualifiers as the last of my training miles to get them ready to race. I don't want them to get hurt. I take a stopwatch and have a set time, and that's that. Then I usually end up driving a handful of times a year with problematic 2-year-olds that have issues. What was your favorite moment in harness racing? Certainly winning the Little Brown Jug in 2008 with Shadow Play would be my all-time favorite. Winning the Gold Cup and Saucer with a horse called the The Papermaker in 1988, a horse I drove and trained. Finally, State Treasurer winning the U.S. Pacing Championship at The Meadowlands in 2015. Everyone knows about your work getting Shadow Play sound enough to race in the Jug. Is solving issues with lameness your forte? It was and it is. In my veterinary work I prefer to be called a lameness diagnostician. I use to do surgeries and I like to work on lameness cases to try to figure them out and get the horses to be better, but my forte in the last 10 years or so has been working with yearlings. We had 14 or 15 this year that we broke in Florida and all but one has qualified to race already. Some of those are no good, but at least the owners get to see what they have and can decide if they want to spend more money on them or move on. Which is the best horse you've ever trained? I've been very fortunate to train many decent horses. Shadow Play was obviously a really good horse. I enjoyed him thoroughly. State Treasurer, of course. Malicious was one of the top 2-year-olds in North America when he raced. Ray Schnittker had One More Laugh then and we were always second or third to him. Arthur Blue Chip was a really nice horse that never got to live up to his potential because of numerous injuries that he incurred in the paddock and the barn, not on the racetrack. Which horse is/was your all-time favorite? I guess Shadow Play. He's done so much for us and continues to do so in the breeding shed. I had a lot of fun with him. I went to places I'd never been before and raced at tracks I've never been to before. He also got me going on the Grand Circuit. What's the one race that you most want to win? We have a couple in the North America Cup this weekend. I haven't won that yet, though I've been in it several times. I'd like to win that, followed closely by the Meadowlands Pace. How rewarding was it to see Century Farroh get over the hump and win the Dan Patch? That was very rewarding. That was a nice opportunity for him in Indiana after some tough trips at The Meadowlands. He is one tough SOB. It's amazing what he does despite what anyone else does to him. What he can take on the racetrack is amazing. When he came home from New Jersey, he lost some weight. He's never been a horse who carries a lot of weight anyway. Then when he came back from Indiana, you could count the ribs on him. So, we are babying him along now trying to get some weight back on. There are still lots more races for him. Hopefully we can get some more weight on him and get him ready for the Canadian Pacing Derby (Sept. 5). If you could choose any horse in history to train, which horse would it be and why? I'd just stick with Shadow Play. He was the best horse I ever had. Even though State Treasurer made more money, he made it over a longer period of time. They had a lot of similar characteristics and traits to them, but Shadow Play, any other year he would've been the top 3-year-old in North America. Unfortunately because of Somebeachsomewhere, he got little or no mention. For me, I'd love to train him again. How has COVID-19 affected your life and business? On the business end, racing and working as a veterinarian, not much has changed otherthan the fact that people aren’t around much in the paddock or the track. I think we are very fortunate in the horse business that we are able to keep racing. I know a lot of tracks are running out of money, like Yonkers, Tioga and Vernon, for example, but so far up here everything has been good. I hope that continues through the end of October when I have to make the decision whether I’m going to go to Florida again or not. If you had the power to change one thing in the sport, what would it be? I really think that the powers to be still aren't getting it right in terms of integrity in the business. If it wasn't for the FBI, doing what they did with people like Allard and those guys, they'd still be racing today. In fact, down on the east coast they are letting Allard race a few horses and I can't figure out why. It just burns me. Last summer, David Menary has three or four cobalt positives pending that they appeal and I have to race next to him every night in the paddock. I hate that. Everything that I do in this business is ethical and up front. We care for our horses and don't abuse them at all like that. I hate being in a situation where these guys can keep appealing when the infraction is obviously real. Let them appeal, but deny them the privilege of racing. Now the owners just use different trainers. It is not right. Like any other business, there are still a lot of unethical people around. We have to get that straight, who races and who doesn’t. And if they have a serious charge pending, like cobalt or EPO, don't let them race until they've had their day in court. How do you view the future of harness racing? In certain places it is a bit uncertain right now and the virus hasn't helped the situation any. Here in Ontario it looks healthy, especially since they signed a 20-year deal last year with the government. I think they need to get rid of a few of the smaller tracks that do nothing for the business except take a million or a million-and-a-half out of the purse pool for some of the other tracks. There are not a lot of young people around like in my day. They used to chase young people away. I used to come to the track on my bike when I was 14 years old and the track maintenance guy would chase me out with a pitchfork some days. Now we try to encourage young people, but there are so many other things to do now. So, there is a lot of uncertainty, but hopefully some young people will help keep the sport going in the future. Time for the stretch drive: Best Horse You Ever Saw: Without a doubt, Niatross. It is hard to compare one era to the next, like Somebeachsomewhere to Niatross. There were totally different tracks, like there were hub-rails back when Niatross raced. Driving styles, equipment, veterinary medicine were all different. To me Niatross was the best I ever saw. He was a magnificent animal. I saw him race in person three or four times, including the race he went at Greenwood in early December in his final year of racing. Best Driver Ever: One era to another it is hard to say. For me either John Campbell or Yannick Gingras. I see Yannick get on these horses that are 40-1 when he comes up here and wins with them in a new record time after they've been puttering around for the last four or five weeks. David Miller is a close third. He's done really well for me over the years. Lasix – Yes or No?: Definitely yes. The people who are making the rules on Lasix and the people in committees saying "no drugs" are full of S H I T. You get a young horse who is a bleeder. There is nothing else wrong with the horse except for some reason, most likely because they were raced or trained with an unknown respiratory virus in their system, they end up with damage in their lungs and become a chronic bleeder. Yet they are 100% sound, have a great attitude and want to be racehorses. Lasix clinically helps 75 to 80% of horses. If you can’t give these horses Lasix, all you are doing is torturing a horse. Bleeding is just like asthma, it is a chronic yet manageable lung disease that cannot be cured but can be managed with the use of environmental management and a therapeutic drug such as Lasix in horses. Favorite TV Show?: Hogan's Heroes Trotters or Pacers?: Obviously most of my career has been pacers, but I have had a few trotters along the way. It seems like the owner crowd I have with me now, none of them want to buy trotters.