Page 55 - 20 July 2012

In addition to raising stakes winners, Kay enjoys bonding with the babies.
Strawfly Doll, who produced our very first stakes horse, Baby Im Game.”
As the Loups raised their two boys, Gunar and Gatlin, now ages 13 and 15, and the horses became a bigger and bigger part of the their lives, Kay left her job as an insurance office manager to become what Wade affectionately calls The Home Boss.
IncorporAtIng excellence
In addition to Rick Miller, Wade has sought advice from various experts, veterinar- ians, and from friends at Robicheaux Ranch in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, where they’ve also bred some horses. “If Wade has a problem, he’s on the phone researching it with anybody he needs to,” Kay said.
“Ninety percent of the people will try to help you,” Wade added. “We try to stick around the successful people and learn from them. Now people are starting to call me for advice, and that feels pretty good.”
Their willingness to seek and follow advice has also resulted in top-notch sale-prepped horses. “When they take a horse to a sale, it’s going to be immaculate,” said friend and busi- nessman Steve Holt of Guthrie, Oklahoma. “You know it’s going to look right.”
Kay kids Wade about his tendency to over- achieve. “Wade doesn’t skimp on anything,” she said. “If he’s going to do something, he does it 110 percent, and it has paid off. But it seems every year we can do one thing a little bit less than the year before and it’s still worked, so he’s learned to ease off a bit.”
All In A dAy’S work
Wade’s insistence on top quality opera- tion-wide has kept him and Kay—and Juan Morales, their employee of 13 years—person- ally involved in every aspect of the business.
A typical day finds Wade and Juan up by 4 a.m. to feed and clean stalls, then heading out
Some people learn by watching; some people learn by doing. In the racehorse world, both of those methods can involve expensive lessons. Owners and breeders Wade and Kay
Loup have learned by asking experts the right questions, developing a sound strategy, and meticulously implementing their plan.
“They did it the right way,” said the couple’s partner in Wacky Racing, Rick Miller of Coleman, Oklahoma. “Wade invested a lot of time finding people who had been in the industry for a long time and talking to them on the phone. He picked it up pretty fast.”
In just about 10 years, Wade and Kay have built their Runnin Broke Ranch in Folsom, Louisiana, up to a small group of successful racehorses, a stakes-producing broodmare band of seven, a barrel-horse broodmare, and a partnership in Fast Prize Dash, a Mr Jess Perry stallion with bottom-side Dash For Cash and Jet Deck bloodlines.
How It All StArted
Kay, who says she was born horse crazy,
grew up showing and gaming on sale barn horses and got her first “good horse” when she was about 13 years old. It was then that she found her love for producing winners. “I wasn’t real successful showing until we started raising our own,” she said. “I’d send them out to be started, and then I’d finish them out.”
She met Wade, who grew up the son of a blacksmith, in 1995 and they married three months later.
“I just took an interest in racehorses and always wanted one,” Wade said. “A man I knew carried Speedhorse in his truck and when we’d have coffee, he’d give me a copy to look at. I’d flip through and read some articles but I didn’t know anything about pedigrees.
“Kay and I pursued it a little but I didn’t really know how to go about it. Kay met Miss Bobbey [Phillips] at Speedhorse and she put me in touch with Rick Miller. He coached me through it.”
Wade and Kay picked out a claimer, but Rick disapproved. “I’ve always been a Strawfly Special fan,” Wade said, “and Rick found me
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