Few, if any, of the customers or clients at O'Brien Realty in Jane who are looking to buy or sell a new home, a farm, land or business realize they are talking to a four-time world champion if owner Donnie O'Brien happens to be in the office and away from his cattle and horses.
Odds are, even locals who probably know Donnie was big into training and showing cutting horses, don't know he won multiple world championships. Three of the world titles were in cutting horses (two from National Cutting Horse Association and one Appaloosa) while he also won one world championship in the pleasure class.
Two of the world championships came the same year. In 2005, O'Brien won two NCHA titles, one of only five people in 75 years to accomplish the feat.
"The way that world championship deal works is it is a year race," O'Brien said. "You have to stay gone all the time. It's a very competitive deal. We showed Mississippi, Oklahoma and in Texas a lot. A lot of the big money shows are in Texas."
It was after being injured as a 20-year-old bull rider when O'Brien first began his cutting horse career.
"I was rodeoing when I was 16 through 20 years old and got all broken up on a bull," O'Brien said. "It took me four or five months to heal up. While I was healing up, there is a man named Kenneth Galyean, who is a hall of famer in the cutting horse world. He was also a close friend of dad's (Don O'Brien).
"I would go up there and kill time while I was healing. He talked me into being a cutting horse trainer, so I left the rodeo stuff and that is where it started."
O'Brien progressed up through the ranks in the cutting horse world. He also started showing pleasure horses, which he did professionally for about 10 years.
In about 1991, he quit the show horses to concentrate on cutting horses. He would keep 30-40 horses in training.
"We would have as many as three rigs of horses on the road at one time," O'Brien said. "We were going to cutting horse contests all over the United States. Sometimes we would have a trailer going one way and a trailer going the other way and you would be flying back and forth. A lot of people around here don't realize how big a business it is."
O'Brien did most of the showing in the professional division of the horses he trained. There are also non-pro and amateur divisions and the people who owned the horses that O'Brien trained would show in those divisions.
O'Brien's wife, Tammy, would also show as a non-professional. She finished fourth in the world one year.
Showing cutting horses is different than a cattle show, where you lead a steer, heifer or bull out for a judging. Cutting horse shows are performance shows, where the horse and rider cut out a steer from a group of cattle and keep it cut away from the herd.
Some of O'Brien's clients included Walmart and Tony Llama. He said it takes about 18 months to train a cutting horse.
O'Brien also raised some of his own cutting horses. He said Don began raising cutting horses about the time he was born and helped him get started in the business.
"I sold a horse that I trained to the owner of the Dallas Mavericks for $100,000," O'Brien said. "That's the highest I ever sold a horse for."
He said in addition to selling horses, O'Brien said his lifetime earnings at shows is right at $1 million dollars. The horses he has trained and showed or trained and sold have earnings at about $2 million.
O'Brien said he quit going to shows for the most part in 2006 in order to start O'Brien Realty in 2007.
He said he keeps about a dozen horses and Tammy still shows a couple of mares.
"I have a four-year-old stud that we are fixing to start to show that could be the most talented horse I have ever had, but who knows" O'Brien said. "After you haul them a 100,000 miles, you find out."
O'Brien said the couple got tired of being on the road all the time and now their business takes up a lot of time. He said he has sold property worth about $15 million and the business has over $30 million in total sales.
Bucking Bulls
O'Brien said his latest venture is raising bucking bulls for rodeos. He said he just recently took eight bulls to a PBR rodeo in Omaha, Neb.
"We bucked everybody off," O'Brien said. "That grey bull (Grey Man) out there has been out 40 times and hasn't been rode yet. I have another called Shodacious. He is 16-1. They rode him one time for 90 points and won the bull riding."
He said two years ago one of his bulls was a reserve champion in Las Vegas at the PBR finals, which was worth $100,000.
O'Brien said he has 15 bulls he is raising and training. He said the training includes a "lot of chute procedure" and using a dummy that can be remotely clicked to knock it off from the bulls' back after 2 to 4 seconds.
"They are wild animals," O'Brien said. "They're mean. You have to teach them to load in a trailer, to haul, to be comfortable and not to beat themselves up or someone else."
O'Brien said he is enjoying spending more time around his 800 acre farm these days.
"We have about 200 mouths to feed," O'Brien said. "I have kind of retired form the cutting horse deal."
Community on 04/09/2015