MAKING HORSE SENSE : Los Alamitos Groom Is Brushing Up Her Skills, If Not Her Living Conditions

Lying inches above a cement floor, surrounded by cinder-block walls that seem constantly to be closing in, Julita Breuer sleeps in the stable area of Los Alamitos Race Course. Next to her collapsible air mattress is a sketch of her daughter, Jessica. Outside are the stirring of restless horses and the audible rise and fall of bettors’ hopes.

This is not home, this is an enlarged closet. It is jammed so full of all manner of goods--food, clothes, a television, a sewing machine, a wooden duck--that any addition probably would have to be freeze-dried.

It used to be difficult for Breuer to fall asleep in these surroundings, where ambiance is smelled, not seen. But the day starts early for a harness racing groom, anywhere from 5 to 7 in the morning, so learning to “block things out” became a necessity.

So did being a groom.

Working and sleeping at places such as Los Alamitos may bring Breuer closer to a home one day. One that she hopes will include Jessica, 6, who lives with Breuer’s ex-husband, Dennis Quirie, in Colorado during the school year. The migratory nature of Breuer’s job--Los Alamitos, Sacramento, Del Mar, Pomona--has made it difficult for her to keep Jessica year-round. She lives with her only during the summer months.

“The moving about would be just too much for a kid trying to go to school,” she said. “Dennis and I decided that, for the time being, this is the best thing we can do.”

Working and sleeping in places such as Los Alamitos is not the life’s ambition of Breuer, 27. This is the means. The rent on the room is right--free. It’s close to work--one not-so-giant step out her door.

The ends are a home and perhaps a gift shop where she can teach sewing.

Not that the horse business has been bad to Breuer the past five years. She came to it after she left her family’s 200-acre farm in Cassville, Wis., searching in that state and a couple of others (Colorado, Florida) for her niche.

“It was really scary,” she said. “I couldn’t find anything I wanted to do.”

She left home after being expelled from Cassville High School, caught in the act of dumping pig manure on a schoolmate’s head.

“The girl had been spreading rumors about me, so I figured if she wanted to spread (manure) about me, she could wear it,” Breuer said.

The dumping itself didn’t go as smoothly as planned. The girl to be dumped on pulled a knife. Breuer picked up a chair to knock away the knife, and the school principal showed up to witness the whole thing.

“I got expelled, but I had enough credits to graduate,” she said. “If I had to do it again, I guess I would. After that I just starting looking for things to do with my life.”

Said Albert Breuer, her father: “We’ve had kids travel about, but Julita has moved about the most.”

She was introduced to harness racing through Quirie, who trained horses. When the marriage broke up, she was hired by owner John McGregor and became a groom.

A groom is responsible for the hands-on care of a horse. He or she is there with a horse in the morning, brushing it, helping it to get loose. If the legs need work, the groom does it. When the horse needs to jog, the groom rides behind. A groom is a nanny wearing jeans and dust.

The only thing handicapping Breuer’s development as a groom was her lack of experience and a deathly fear of horses. Where the fear came from, she’s not sure. She remembers that when she was a child on the farm--one of 15 children--a neighbor’s mean-spirited horse chased her around the grounds. She remembers that her first day as a groom, a horse named Flaming Mamie tried to run her over. And she knew that each time she had to ride behind a horse, she got so nervous that “I had to make a trip to the bathroom.”

But she remained. Slowly the fear has eased, replaced by a very real “respect for what that animal can do.”

Today she is among the West’s best. She was selected groom of the meeting at Pomona’s Fairplex Park in 1987. McGregor believes “she can write her own ticket,” that training, even owning horses is not out of her reach.

Breuer says she still has a lot to learn. There are medical books to be read and old country remedies to listen to.

“I heard of this one that you mix manure, bran and two eggs and pack around a horse’s leg to help tighten the muscle,” she said. “I haven’t tried that yet.”

Breuer earns about $200 a week for the care of three of McGregor’s horses. She earns another $20 in paddock fees whenever one of the horses is in a race. If the horse wins a race, she gets another $30. Windfall profits they are not. But slowly she has put money away. A couple of thousand dollars, she says.

So the home and the gift shop are still a ways away.

“But I’m getting there,” she said. “That’s important. And I really do like this. For now.”