Page 42 - November 2017

Barry credits
his family with his ability to participate in racing.
The Petry family: Garrett, Barry (holding Mya), yearling filly South Success, Elise (holding William), Blake, Julia, Ayden, Heath, Olivia & Mallory
Downs in Opelousas — which runs early October through mid-December — is running two this year, yet he sometimes sells all he raises.
“You end up buying or selling and if you sell, well, there they go; you’ll just end up watching them run,” he says. “If you buy them back, you’ve got ’em — you’ve got to push them along. The sales price kind of decides that for me.”
Barry credits his family with his ability to participate in racing. “I have five
kids and seven grandkids. My children showed calves and all have [ex-racehorse] ranch horses and help with the cattle, too,” Barry says. “They’ve worked every summer; I don’t hire any other help. In the summertime, those boys are fixing fence, cleaning stalls, putting horses on walking wheels, washing horses and sales prepping for 90 days before the Louisiana Quarter Horse Breeders’ Association Sale. In late winter and springtime, they get up early, load mares into the trailer and head to
the breeding farms. They help me break yearlings, too. I definitely wouldn’t be able to do it without them. They’re the reason we can have the number of horses that can put you on the map. If it wasn’t for their help, I’d have had fewer mares and there may have been one or two of the better
Barry Petry (center) with partners Paul Watson and Danny Pugh.
40 SPEEDHORSE, November 2017
I definitely wouldn’t be able to do it without them. They’re the reason we can have the number of horses that can put you on the map. If
it wasn’t for their help, I’d have had fewer mares and there may have been one or two of the better mares that I’d never have bought. They let me ‘up’ this hobby a little bit.“