Trainer Taylor Gower will send out his very first Hambletonian starter when Yonkers Trot runner-up Take My Picture puts his nose on Post 1 in the first of the Hambletonian eliminations Saturday, July 31 at the Meadowlands

Racetrack.

The 28-year-old Gower is cautiously optimistic the gelded son of Classic Photo can advance to the $1.5 million final of the Hambletonian, which will take place August 7.

“It’s only once in a lifetime you get a shot with a horse like that so, we’ll give it a go,” Gower said. “To be perfectly honest, as a trainer, I don’t think I’d suggest putting him in, just because he hasn’t stepped up and shown he can go with that group of colts he’s going to be racing against. But I can’t blame the owners (Joseph and Laurie Davino of Clarksburg, New Jersey) for wanting to give it a try. It’s going to be quite a while before they see another trotter like him.

“He always gives a good effort; he’s not going to be embarrassed out there, I don’t think. In the Stanley Dancer (at the Meadowlands on July 17, where he finished sixth), the trip wasn’t great. He kind of waited and waited and didn’t catch any real live cover. So if we draw good and we can sit close, we might be able to get a cheque and squeeze into the final. I know racing’s not easy.”

This year has been a major step up for the Gower Stable, with his charges winning $459,529 through July 26, only $11,000 less than the stable earned in 2008 and 2009 combined. Gower says the change in his stable composition has accounted for the improvement.

“Over the last five or six years, I was breaking a lot of colts for different people,” he said. “I started just breaking them and sending them out pretty quickly. Then they started leaving them for a few months and some would leave them for six months and now they’re leaving them with me to get them racing. We’ve had some pretty good horses come through the barn that I broke and got started, like Schoolkids (p,3,1:50.1f, $534,295), Armbro Dancer (p,4,1:48.4, $865,157), Bettor Sweet (p,4,1:47.2, $1,011,436). These guys are kind of leaving them with me and good horses make the trainer look good.”

Gower adds something a little different to the training routine of most of his horses; he leaves the harness behind and opts for a saddle to keep Take My Picture and stablemates fit at the family’s Hillsdale Farm.

“This time of year I will start riding a tad more,” Gower said. “As the season progresses, the jog miles are less important than just keeping them happy. He’ll be ridden more this time, now to the end of the summer. All of them will. Leading up to this point, I’ll look for different ways to keep them fit, whether ride them, put them on the exerciser; we have a big farm, so I try not to let them see the track hardly at all unless they’re training between races. We keep them out in the woods, and that kind of stuff, so it keeps them fresh.”

Gower admits he did not take a high-tech approach to training his horses to ride, but says his steeds have adapted nicely.

“I’m not the best rider,” he said. “Take My Picture was one of the first ones I did it with. I was just kind of playing with the idea and my grandfather (Walter Gower, age 78), being the old-time horseman he is, said, ‘Just get on the son-of-a-gun and ride him.’ I did it and he took to it immediately. There are several in the barn you can just hop on and ride them around. They’re as good as any saddle horse you can buy. They love it.”

Gower’s grandfather, a fixture in New Jersey racing for decades, is getting a kick out of his grandson’s upswing.

“He’s enjoying it; he’s definitely real supportive and he’s tickled to death that I’m finally getting a couple good horses myself,” he said. “We’re partial to trotters. He pretty much specifically trained trotters.”

Take My Picture’s last tough day of work was scheduled to be Tuesday (July 27) prior to Saturday’s Hambletonian elims.

“He’ll have a pretty tough training mile (on Tuesday),” Gower said. “I do quite a bit of interval training, so I will train anywhere from four to six half-mile intervals and then he’ll just have light work until the weekend. Then it’s up to the racing gods.”

This story courtesy of Harness Racing Communications, a division of the U.S. Trotting Association. For more information, visit ustrotting.com.