by Rich Fisher, USTA Web Newsroom Senior Correspondent

Rich Fisher

Trenton, NJ — Who would have thought that in 1968, the maternal line would still be going strong in 2013?

Back then, Dottie Hock and her husband Skip owned and bred a horse named Shadow Jill.

Since then, Viet Nam, Richard Nixon, disco, women’s shoulder pads and high hair, Reaganomics, grunge music, Beanie Babies, Monica Lewinsky and dial-up Internet have come and gone.

But the female descendents of Shadow Jill are still going strong.

“It goes way back,” said the wonderfully pleasant Dottie, who lost Skip to cancer in 2001. “What we’ve done is somehow kept each one of the mares so we always had a daughter out of one of them.”

Mike Lizzi photo

Bettor Business was a 1:54.2 winner in the NYSS final for 2-year-old filly pacers this past September at Yonkers.

The seventh generation, Bettor Business, recently won the New York Sire Stakes championship for 2-year-old filly pacers.

“I was just tickled pink about that,” Hock said.

And just where did Bettor Business come from? It’s a loooong story.

The parade started with Shadow Jill, who the Hocks bought after owning a few earlier horses upon their move to Allentown, N.J., from New York.

“We got a big tax return one year,” Dottie said, “and we decided to buy a horse.”

It got serious with Shadow Jill, who was bred to Isle Of Wight, producing Bold Rush — the winner of the inaugural New Jersey Classic in 1980. But more long-lasting was Shadow Jill giving birth to Estoril several years earlier. One of Estoril’s foals was Cascais.

If you are wondering about those names, so was everybody else.

“We used to race them and people would say ‘What is that, Estoril and Cascais?” Hock said. “Well, we went on our honeymoon to Portugal, we stayed at these two little seaside towns, one was Estoril and the other was right down the road — Cascais.”

By the time Cascais was bred, the honeymoon was over and it was time to switch gears on the names. Cascais gave birth to a mare named All Business, which was appropriate since every mare in the family who came after that had ‘Business’ in her name.

“I don’t know, I guess we kind of ran out of ideas,” Hock said with a laugh. “We thought ‘that’s a neat name, All Business.’ We saw a magazine article that said ‘he’s all business,’ so I guess we thought she was all business. And then it went from business this, to business that.”

Indeed it was. All Business bred She’s All Business, who bred a mare named Tricky Business, who is the mother of the filly Bettor Business.

“It’s a little hard to keep track,” Hock said, quite correctly.

But as a grandmother of three girls, Dottie still knows how to keep track of things at age 73. She has vivid recollections of each of the moms.

“Some were a little different in certain ways,” she said. “But they’re big horses, they’re all big. Tricky Business, I’d say she stands over 17 hands. She’s All Business is a very big mare. They all have that in common.

“I don’t know where that came from. Shadow Jill was a normal size, average size. After her Estoril was not that big, I don’t know how it happened, but all of a sudden, they got bigger and bigger. They are literally big horses.”

As for their personalities, each had guts.

“They were always game horses,” Hock said. “That was one thing I liked about them. They would always try. Even if they were hurting a little bit, they had a lot of heart. They were all that way.”

Of all the mares, Dottie said Tricky Business has probably been the most successful as a broodmare. In addition to Bettor Business, her foals include Big Business (1:50f; $380,611), Best Business (1:54.2h; $151,667) and Disco Diva (1:53.3f; $57,740).

“Tricky got kicked out in the field, or something, and her knee blew up,” Dottie said. “We had it X-rayed and it was obvious she wasn’t ever going to be able to race. So we bred her and she became a successful broodmare.

“As for our most successful racehorse, it was probably her mother (She’s All Business). Bettor Business has proven herself as a 2-year-old now. She could be the best (racehorse). I’d say right now she’s the best 2-year-old and potentially, I’m sure she’s going to go on and be a nice broodmare too.

“They all show potential, but they all run into all kinds of problems. It’s always something with horses. They’re always looking for something to get into and get in trouble.”

There are other horses, of course, that have been bred from the maternal line started by Shadow Jill. The horses are all trained by Ben Stafford, whose facility is near Dottie’s farm.

“That way I can run over and look at them,” she said.

She still breeds, but sends the mares to Blue Chip Farms in upstate New York.

“I leave them up there, they foal there and they get them in foal and then they come back home,” Dottie said. “At my age I don’t want to be out checking horses at night, things can go wrong if you don’t have the right people there. You put so much into it and all that money into it, you’d rather have them in a good facility. Not that my facility is bad, I just can’t do it anymore.”

Asked how much longer the line of “Business” horses can go, Dottie laughed and said “I don’t know how long I’m going to keep going.”

“I’ve got my grandchildren, they love it,” she added. “They have show horses too, and my daughter likes the horses. The family likes horses, I’m sure when I’m gone they’ll probably have a very good home.”

Which means this line of mares might not be going out of Business anytime soon.