I have a coming two year old stud out of a Smart Little Lena stud and the dam traces back to Gray's Starlight by Peppy San Badger. I will be breaking him within a few months and just wanted some input. I could

A. Send him to a reining trainer and have the trainer compete on him in reining.

B. Train him myself for Barrels and compete on him in IBRA and MSRA.

Does it make a difference that he was cow Bred? Or would he still make a good Barrel horse?

I LOVE cowbred barrel horses! They are barrel hunters who love a job!!!! Only draw back is they give up a little speed run wise. They will make the same pretty , fast, run every time BUT they wont outrun a horse bred with some speed. Having said that, I would take a solid cow bred, horse that gives you 100000% any day of the week. 

I wouldn't discount a cowbred on speed. Some of those cow horses are fast and catty, they can outrun a race bred horse. Alot of them can get in ans outta a barrel quikcer and smoother which is faster, I love my cowbred horses, they r so fun, gritty, quick and super catty, jus thang on when they turn!!!! I have a spots hot daughter that is out of a peptoboonsmal daughter, she can fly. she loves her job. I also have a HBC mare that was 1D/2D in colorado and oklahoma. Both horses were cutters previously. and my spots hot daughter also won alot sorting.

I absolutely love a cow horse that's running barrels.  

Ditto

Doc Bar was a race horse before producing cow horses; cow horses are quick and catty and can make up for a lack of speed and size in those tight turns 

This is my cowbred mare.Her mom is a double bred driftwood and her dad is Fire water ta fame.People say she has a signature turn all her own.She gets across the pen pretty fast to.LR DriftNTaFame

I have stalked 2 particular little cowbred horses (Smart Little Scoot who is by Smart Little Lena) that run here for the past 10+ years and the woman that originally started them on the barrel pattern has had several others to boot that were bred similar,  wicked in the barrel pen and her husband team roped on also.  Those little suckers get across a pen in a hurry, the two I particularly like are small, like 14.2 and can flat run a turn too. A couple years ago I was helping a young girl that was looking for a HS rodeo horse and saw that one of the SLS bred horses that I really liked was available and she ended up with him, now she is off to college and in a world that sometimes works in strange and wonderful ways I ended up with him.  I guess the thing is that we have to remind ourselves at time even though breeding has gotten very "race/cow/pleasure" based that quarter horses started all started as an ideal breed based on speed, so even if they are cow bred, somewhere in their parentage was originally some speed.

Smart Little Lena and Grays Starlight are prevalent in the reined cow horse. In the RCH you need speed as to not to get out ran by a cow going down the fence, turn one on the fence and quick footed for the cutting/herd work.

I like where the Grays Starlight is on the ops papers, he made a better broodmare sire.

Great point. My gelding I ran barrels on and did showed Reined Cow Horse and Rand Ranch Horse Versatility was a strange pedigree of performance on the top side and then TB racehorse mixed with Cowhorse on the bottom side, he had a ton of cow and never got outrun across the pen by a cow or down the fence either.  Our second ever RCH show they ended up using a big outdoor arena, it was super windy so they chose not to put any tarps/covers on the panels and the cattle were FRESH, like jump out of the pen fresh, LOL!!! I ended up winning the herd work in my division pretty much based on the fact we didn't lose one back into the herd. A) my horse had the speed to get across the bigger open pen with fresh cattle and B) I didn't leave his air in the warm up pen.

Did you happen to notice the 16 year old girl in the American top 4... a qualifier... her horses papers