Dark N Traffic traded her barrel racing career for the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity.
Dark N Traffic was not supposed to be a cow horse. The granddaughter of Frenchmans Guy went to trainer Carter Metcalf ’s program so she could get broke for her owners, Texas veterinarians Drs. Cameron Stoudt and Josh Donnell.
She was bred to be a barrel horse, so that’s what she was going to be. Then Metcalf worked the mare on the flag, as he does all his 2-year-olds, and she showed him a little something that changed her career trajectory.
“The main thing, I guess, was she had a good mind and big stop, and seemed to have quite a bit of cow for her breeding,” Metcalf explained.
He showed Donnell a video of the mare working the flag and got the green light to put the barrel prospect into cow horse training. In October 2020, Metcalf and the mare competed at the sport’s biggest event, the National Reined Cow Horse Association Snaffle Bit Futurity, presented by Metallic Cat.
Miracle Baby
The fact that Dark N Traffic exists at all, let alone is thriving in cow horse training, is enough to make Stoudt get misty-eyed. She only had the mare’s dam a few years, but the broodmare’s sweet disposition and personality was enough to worm her way into Stoudt’s heart. The mare’s struggle to survive laminitis—and Stoudt’s determination to get herthrough it—is still hard to talk about.
“She wanted to live, but she just couldn’t,” said Stoudt, who owns
Dark N Traffic with her husband in the name of Mendota Properties. “I tried to move heaven and earth to get her through her founder issue and everything, and she just couldn’t do it.”
When Cfour Black Easter died, they harvested her ovaries and performed intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to Traffic Guy with three embryos. The first two failed.
“Her mom meant so much to me, so to have this baby here right now is pretty cool,” Stoudt said. “We had three embryos out of that mare and two didn’t take, and [Dark N Traffic] was the last one that took.”
When Metcalf suggested they put Dark N Traffic into cow horse training, Stoudt was game. She and Donnell have a veterinary practice, La Mesa Equine Lameness Center, in Pilot Point, Texas, and also run a rehabilitation center, Equine Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation, in Whitesboro. They’re also parents to Bridger.
Stoudt, a barrel racer, doesn’t have as much time to ride as she once did.
Though she’s never had a cow horse or competed in the sport, she was excited to see what her favorite mare’s baby could do.
“Originally she was going to be a barrel horse, and unfortunately as life goes on, I got busier. My husband’s busy, and we also have a 1-year-old as well,” Stoudt said. “We got her with Carter and this is a great fit, so we just rolled on with the Snaffle Bit Futurity.”
Trading Barrels For Cows
Dark N Traffic was supposed to be a barrel horse because she hails from a pedigree stacked with horses that can turn barrels. In fact, she’s bred to be a very good barrel horse.
“Huckleberry’s” sire, Traffic Guy, earned $21,779 running barrels and has sired barrel racing winners of nearly $550,000. Dark N Traffic was one of two offspring in the 2020 NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity sired by the successful barrel horse stallion. The son of Frenchmans Guy was also represented at the show by Martinis In Traffic, a buckskin horse competing in the Level 1 Limited Open prelims with trainer Josey Butler.
Like Huckleberry, Martinis In Traffic is straight barrel-bred—his pedigree features names like First Down Dash, Chicks Beduino and Streakin Six. Bred and owned by Paris Wixon of Hope Hull, Alabama, the horse finished his Level 1 Limited Open preliminary round in 54th place with a composite of 603 (200 herd/201 rein/202 cow).
Though there are some stallions that sire winners in barrel racing and reined cow horse—cutting stallion and NRCHA sire Dual Rey, for example, has fathered $162,000 in barrel racing winners and Rockin W has sired $103,650 in barrel earners—it’s not typical for a barrel racing stallion to sire one entrant in the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity, let alone two in the same year.
Metcalf, who had never ridden a Traffic Guy before Huckleberry, has since ridden a few more and likes what he’s seen. Throughout the year, Huckleberry and Metcalf showed in Green Horse classes to get ready for the Snaffle Bit Futurity.
Futurity Adventure
Even though Huckleberry is about a hand to a hand-and-one-half taller than her futurity counterparts, she still pulled off a 207 herd work to kick off the NRCHA Snaffle Bit Futurity Limited Open preliminaries.
“Her herd work is probably her weakest event, just because she’s a pretty big horse so she’s not quite as quick-footed as some of these smaller, cow-bred horses,” Metcalf said. “But she still was very representable, and minus one little miss on our second cut that got us a negative mark, she’d have probably been right there at a 70, 71.”
They improved their score to a 213.5 in the reining, a discipline where the mare was able to showcase her trainable mind.
“In the reining, she really came to play,” Metcalf said. “She can stop as big as any of them and turns fine, and just really for her [non-cow-horse] breeding was very much, mind-wise, whatever you want to do.”
Going down the fence is Huckleberry’s favorite event. Though she has speed, she doesn’t run hot—she loves to chase a cow and marked a 203 in the prelims.
“On that cow, for sure when she gets going, she wants to go head that cow,” Metcalf said. “She learned that pattern and you can feel that barrel part come out in her where once she figured out the game, she knows what we’re going to do when I go release that cow down the fence.”
Dark N Traffic’s Future
Watching the mare power down the fence to turn the cow is very exciting for Stoudt.
“It’s pretty cool to see, because this is not what she was supposed to do,” said Stoudt, who thinks the mare’s athleticism would suite many disciplines. “This is not what she was bred for.”
She’s extremely thankful for the work Metcalf has done with Huckleberry, as well as to Traffic Guy’s former owners, her friends Troy and Jamie Ashford. Just shy of a year ago they sold Traffic Guy, who is now owned by Chad and Tiffany Beus and stands at Beus Quarter Horses in Spanish Fork, Utah.
It’s natural to ask if barrels are in the cards for Huckleberry after her reined cow horse escapades are over. The plan was always for Stoudt to ride her once her own life slowed down, but nothing is written in stone.
“At this point we can probably go any direction we wanted her to,” Stoudt said. “I don’t know if we’ve settled on a certain path for her yet. I think the world is her oyster.”
This article was originally published in the March 2021 issue of Barrel Horse News. Molly Montag is editor of Quarter Horse News, a fellow Morris Equine Group brand dedicated to coverage of the Western performance horse industry.
