Hunger Over Everything: Brian Coleman's Road Back to the World Championship

Before the accident, Brian Coleman was already a legend. 

Nine world titles. 

Forty years behind the lines. 

A client roster that reads like a Forbes list. 

But on an ordinary spring morning in 2022, a runaway pair of draft horses put him in a ditch with a broken neck, three shattered vertebrae, a collapsed lung, and eight weeks until the Calgary Stampede. 

What happened next is the part nobody outside the draft horse world knows and it's the part that defines everything. 

In this episode, nine-time World Champion Six-Horse Hitch driver Brian Coleman sits down with host Dr. Chad Hewlett to walk through the accident, the recovery, and the championship win that followed, unpacking along the way what four decades at the highest level of horsemanship actually teaches a person about foundation, engagement, and the kind of hunger that a body cast can't touch.

Listen For:

:00 What does it sound like when a nine-time World Champion admits he took his horses for granted?

6:20 Why does foundational skill create clients even when those clients can't explain why they trust you?

8:19 What is engagement, and why does every high-performing team horse or human rise or fall on it?

14:32 Why can't you use fatigue to teach anything, and what happens when you try?

27:23 When your mind finally knows your body can do it, what actually changes?

CONNECT WITH BRIAN COLEMAN, HORSE EXPERT | OWNER OF EAGLESFIELD

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CONNECT WITH CHAD HEWLETT, VETERINARIAN | OWNER OF ENERGY EQUINE

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Transcript

Brian Coleman (00:00):

You still have the hunger. The hunger's still there. And I think it's the hunger that makes you want to go back and do it again. If you lost the hunger, you'd probably come to your senses and realize there's better ways to make a living.

Chad Hewlett (00:19):

Hi everyone. This is Chad Hewlett. I'm here today with my friend, colleague, competitor, and client for the last 31 years, Brian Coleman. He's an international horseman in the sense of driving draft horses. We'll get into it and you'll kind of get to know who he is as we go along. He's been doing this his entire life and we're going to go through a few of his stories — or one story in particular that happened in 2022, kind of in the spring, where we had an accident and we ended up going to a horse show and things came out very nicely in the end, but there was definitely a setup there. And this podcast is called Unbridled and Legendary, and this is episode number one as far as interviews go. Today we want to kind of set up a little bit about how Brian's reputation is built and the quiet reps.

Brian, you want to tell us just a little bit about who you are, how this all sets up, and why you're driving those horses that day?

Brian Coleman (01:16):

Okay. Thanks, Chad. And so for years, we've had both a training facility as well as competitive showing. So we try and pay a few of the extra bills by training extra horses for clients — all the way from hobby horses to competitive horses as well. So this was a team that was one of the hobby teams. And we were probably at a busier time of year when we probably shouldn't have had that many horses on the farm, but we did and we had success with it before and we didn't think twice about it.

Chad Hewlett (01:53):

Yeah. Yeah. And so in 2022, how many years had you been in the industry by then? I met you and I was talking about this the day as we were driving out here. I met you in 1995.

Brian Coleman (02:05):

Correct. Yeah. So I started right out of high school, '86. I graduated and Bruce Roy — good friend of mine and one of my high school teachers — he said, "I think this is what you need to do if you don't have something picked out." And it turned into a lifelong career. And like I tell everyone, I've never been smart enough to quit.

Chad Hewlett (02:27):

Yeah. And just in the sense of looking at this, you have your family involved too. Can we go through it just a little bit because I think that — and not in a big way, but just how that's all fit, how you guys started out real quick as far as driving horses. I know there's a wife and some kids and family and all that sort of stuff. Can you go through that?

Brian Coleman (02:48):

100%. Yeah. And it's a very family-driven industry. I mean, it's an industry that involves everyone. And then we start all the kids quite young. So Taylor and Luke and my wife, Colleen, they've kind of grown up in the industry. Colleen and I both grew up in industries very similar — competitive horse industry. She came from ... Now I was from the farm side more so than the competitive side. Colleen grew up competitive on the racetrack with Standardbred racehorses. And she rode horses, showed Western and English, and jumped. And she had quite a career on the competition side of things before we met. Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (03:31):

And if you were to kind of feather that in from the standpoint of now you guys are — like we talked about — world champion draft horses, that's essentially your business. And as the niche gets smaller and smaller, now we're down to Percherons for the most part. I mean, there's some other breeds in there as well, and driving is your thing more so than feed and lead. I mean, you talked about Bruce a little bit too. How did Bruce get you kind of pushed in a direction to start handling horses?

Brian Coleman (04:02):

Yeah, Bruce and I always talked horses in school when you're kind of there in the mornings and you're visiting with your teachers and stuff. And Bruce was always very involved with his students as far as visiting on all aspects. And we talked about horses and he knew my family had horses, my family knew his family. So it all the way from Bruce — he taught my mom and he taught my youngest brother and sister, and that was his career with our family. So I mean, he was very involved with that aspect of it. And he's a cornerstone of the Percheron breed as far as just a breed encyclopedia. I mean, he knows every horse from the '30s all the way up to the current horses. So I mean, he's a walking encyclopedia as far as the horse industry is involved.

Chad Hewlett (04:53):

Yeah. How many years has he been at the Calgary Stampede? I know we were talking about this last time — not to get off on Bruce, but just real quick, I think it's

Brian Coleman (05:00):

... Yeah, so he's been a volunteer at Calgary Stampede since 1957, so that's quite a few years.

Chad Hewlett (05:07):

Yeah. And Bruce really likes the competitive. He does. I think that's a big part we can say for sure — he was a high school teacher for you in Cremona. And just so everything I know about Bruce, he's always been driven by competition and how it makes us better and how we can develop the breed and make the breed better as well, as well as our people. Brian, coming back to

just looking at how you started, and it's just one thing — it's like we're going to talk a lot today about all these elite horse show wins, elite clients too. I mean, you're in an industry of billionaires as far as owners go. And the one client you had before owned the Chicago Cubs and is still in the industry. But in the sense of being a high school kid, Bruce Roy talks to you — you did marry a woman that came from showing, but that's not what you grew up in. But having that, knowing how to put that all together with Bruce's help, but at the same time you had to kind of tune some things and we're craftsmen — and I think that's a big part of this chapter. Can you go through how that all came about?

Brian Coleman (06:20):

Right. So I mean, like I'd said, when you learn the foundation properly — how much a horse is capable of, what they can do in a day, what they can do in a week — you can read that animal and know exactly what they need and what they have left in them as far as skill and talent that you can develop. So that comes from having that foundation, and the foundation will take you forward. And then when you start dealing with your clientele, they recognize that skill. So they maybe don't know ... It's like the "it" factor — and not every ... Every industry has an "it," whether it's from a supermodel to a hockey player, and some have it more than others. But when you have the skills and you have it, then clients recognize that and they want to bring that out and they want to help use that skill to take them forward in what they do.

Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (07:26):

So if we kind of come through this a little bit, you just talked about that. What is it like for you getting it right with the team? Because you mentioned it, right? And we'll get into this more as we go along because Brian not only ... I think a lot of times when you're in a horse world, you're just working on one horse and you're maybe chasing a cow or roping something, but Brian's sitting on a wagon that's moving at speed with six different creatures out in front of him and they're all on their own lines and you're getting judged by how balanced they are and how perfect the symmetry is. So we can build this back into your team as well as far as in the barn — but give us a little bit of an idea, because it's one thing to drive a plow with one horse, but to get six athletic animals all moving in the right direction ...

Brian Coleman (08:19):

Correct.

And with a level of talent will come different personalities too. And we know that from people, we know that from other animals. But basically what we're trying to do is get every horse in unison with, A, his teammate, and then his fellow teammates either ahead of him or behind him. So engagement is huge. You have to have a horse that will engage. You have to learn engagement, you have to know what engagement is. And once a horse learns to engage, then you can develop that more or less to match each of his fellow horses. And that's just in the trenches every day — work those horses until they do everything exactly like their partner.

Chad Hewlett (09:06):

Yeah. Yeah. I really like that. That really drives it home. I think in business too, or just in life and family in general, you need engagement, right?

Brian Coleman (09:16):

Engagement's huge for everything. I mean, all the way from ... I mean, you could probably look at — not getting off into sports analogies too much — but just the engagement, if you watch football. Football is a game of huge engagement, not all at once, but when they're engaged, they're very engaged. And they stand around and they're ready for the next level of engagement. And you can take a lot of those analogies and put them into your training program. And I think you can take a lot of your analogies from your program and apply them to other things in your life as far as being engaged. Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (09:51):

No, it's so true. So we talked a little bit about how spring is really busy. In Canada, and especially — I don't know, all of Canada, but let's just say Western Canada, Alberta in general — we have a longer winter season, and then when spring starts to roll, people start to get ... They get excited about doing things. Yeah. So I would say in 2022, it wasn't uncommon for you to have more than enough horses running around here in the sense of paying bills, training for people, trying to place yourself in a position where you're it and what other people want to bring in more horses to train. So was there anything that spring — I mean, can you go back a little bit on how that all came together?

Brian Coleman (10:36):

Well, I think in general, our industry — it's a great living, but it's a poor way to pay the bills. And there's a lot of things in agriculture and horses that are that way. So you do have to do the extra things, all the way from when I shoed horses more extensively — and basically, well, over all of North America — you'd do that plus train, plus shows. So I mean, you would cram a lot of activity into a busy show schedule. So you'd definitely overextend yourself, and that's what we did. And when you're younger, you don't maybe think about it as much as you do once you start to get a little bit extra age on you.

Chad Hewlett (11:20):

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Time has passed us a little bit — not past us, but it's been going on. And sometimes, I think the other thing too is — you hear this term all the time — overnight success. That time of year, what's a normal day like for you guys? I mean, do you start at 10 o'clock after you have a bowl of Cheerios, or what's happening?

Brian Coleman (11:44):

No, I mean, it's early mornings, especially when ... I mean, if you're going to work like that, this time of year the days get longer and you try and maximize those daylight hours because that's when your horses are active, they're more attuned to wanting to be active. So I mean, when they're ready to be active and you're working on them, they're going to learn more than when they're in their sleep cycle. So you use your daylight hours to advantage and you train to maximize that effort that they want to put into the program.

Chad Hewlett (12:22):

Yeah, that's a big part of it. Well, let's kind of dive into ... Let's feather that to bridge into the runaway — what happens when control ... We're always trying to be in control of things, but I think we all know that sometimes you're loosely on the reins in a pragmatic way, right?

Brian Coleman (12:48):

So without going over the top on what the team was, it was a team that we'd trained before. They'd had some time off, they had some issues, and then they came back to us to work on some of those issues. And bottom line, we took for granted how off track these horses were. And with that said, we didn't address their issues as seriously as we should have. So we went back and did a little better review and then we put them back in the program where they were when we'd had them previous. So we should have reviewed things more and done some more work to get those horses where they needed to be.

Chad Hewlett (13:41):

Yeah. And I feel like, knowing you as long as I have, you're pretty good. When we worked together on projects and trying to figure out a particular horse's limitations or issues, you're very critical of that. And so inside of that, these horses — you'd had them before, got them going, had helped them get going good, and then they kind of got carried away and then came back sort of thing. And inside of that, is there a particular ... You guys hook up in a way ... Can you go through a little bit of what it's like to, in a quick way, to hone down on a horse or to get them to flourish? What do you guys do? I know you drive them one hour, two hours, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, three days a week. What was happening?

Brian Coleman (14:32):

Well, we don't do anything by a stopwatch. I mean, without avoiding the question, you serve each animal to what they need and what they're receptive to that day. Obviously, younger horses are going to have a shorter attention span. Older horses are going to have an ability to work longer. The biggest thing with those horses is we maybe took for granted that they were going to return to their foundation when we'd started on them — they'd got too far away from that and we didn't review and emphasize the control aspect that we should have. And I'd been driving them for probably a week or better before this happened, and they'd given me problems within that. So that should have been more of a wake-up call, but you're younger at that time than I am now — you didn't have the wisdom of knowing what was going to be in the cards.

So I mean, you thought they'll come back to it, they'll come back to it — and maybe that was the mistake. You can't really use fatigue as a teaching tool in an animal. They have to understand the concepts and know the concepts. Then you can get them tired and make them appreciate things more, but you can't use fatigue as a teaching tool. And with that said, I probably took that for granted and I thought, well, they know the skills, they'll come back to the skills, we'll get them good and tired, and they'll go back to where they were. They didn't.

Chad Hewlett (16:11):

Yeah. No. And I mean, in all realistic terms, this wouldn't be the first time you had a set of horses that were difficult to train, though.

Brian Coleman (16:22):

Yeah. So with that said, we really haven't had many major issues over the years. There are always things. I mean, you're working with young horses and troubled horses, all horses. So you do have issues, but this was by far the biggest issue we'd ever had, and obviously the circumstances that went with it.

Chad Hewlett (16:44):

Yeah. And then just go back, talk to us a little bit about how that day came about. Give us how you ... I think Faye was in the barn. Yeah. Faye and Colleen were working in the barn and it was just a normal day. It was just — normal day. It wasn't like it was a ...

Brian Coleman (17:04):

Yeah. Well, it was a typical spring day. I mean, I think I'd shod a horse in the morning while the crew was doing feeding chores and were starting to clean. And then we drove a four-horse hitch of the show horses we had. We got them all put away. And then there was manure to haul from cleaning the barn. So I thought, well, I'd take this pair — not a young pair, this pair that we were working on — and they could haul the manure for the day. Well, I'd gone out, unloaded the load, and was coming back to the barn, and that's when they ... And it was more, yes, they gave me trouble, but the place where they gave me trouble and got down into the ditch was ... If that had happened two or 300 feet back, I could have circled in the field and probably or possibly had a different outcome.

Maybe worse — you don't know. But I mean, we only know the situation that did happen. The timing was as much an issue as the actual training issue, but just where you're at — kind of crossing — there was a ditch right there and they got into the ditch on me and it went south from there.

Chad Hewlett (18:15):

Yeah. And just so for a lot of people out there, whether you're in the horse industry or you're not in the horse industry — driving horses, you've got lines and they're out in front of you and you're not sitting on them. And so Brian was sitting on a bouncy chair, so to speak, on the back of a manure spreader, right?

Brian Coleman (18:32):

Yeah. So we're hauling a load of manure with the team. And anyway, I mean, we've hauled thousands and thousands of loads over the years, so it's not out of the norm for us to do, but definitely it's not an off-road vehicle and we got off the road.

Chad Hewlett (18:51):

And then go through that, because I think some of it is there, some of it you don't maybe remember per se. Is that correct? Or do you remember ... No, because we never really talked about this a whole bunch.

Brian Coleman (19:02):

No, I remember everything. I mean, it went back for a minute when you actually ... The point of impact — I don't know exactly, but it didn't feel like a very long time because the pain was basically ... It went down into a rough ditch, got down in the ditch and threw me out and I landed on my head and came kind of landing down on my back. And then you're about as out of breath as you've ever been in your life. I mean, it just knocked the air right out of you — you could hardly breathe, you're gasping for breath and everything else was gone. So it was just a matter of 20, 30 seconds and that's where we were.

Chad Hewlett (19:43):

Yeah. And I mean, there's timing and then there's not timing too. And May of the season — those are not times when you want to be out, right?

Brian Coleman (19:55):

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's your busy time of year. I was shoeing less obviously than I am now, but I was still shoeing quite a few horses. So I mean, I had shoeing clients, we had training clients, and then we had the Messengers from Wyoming that we were showing for at the time. And we had Stampede coming up, plus our world show at the end of July coming up. So I mean, we had our ... Basically, that's our Olympics. So I mean, we're training for all these things and all of a sudden you're instantly immobile.

Chad Hewlett (20:29):

Yeah. And if we talk just a little bit about Messengers — not just because it's Kirk Steele in general — but when you have a client like that, what kind of budget, just so everybody has a bit of an idea that this isn't a $3,000 adventure. Kirk, when you think about it, you guys are into it for the horses and everything. Are we talking $200,000, $300,000, a million? What has your client invested, so to speak?

Brian Coleman (20:59):

Obviously it's mushroomed a lot since then, but we're looking at horses that were running us at that time, $20,000 to $30,000 horses. And with our expense budget in — besides horses — our expense budget was right around $400,000 US per year to go up and down the road and show this group of animals.

Chad Hewlett (21:24):

Yeah. And arguably, that's the bread and butter for you and Colleen too. Not that the other horses weren't helping pay the bills, but — for sure. That's what you do, that's your client after all. Yeah. And then as we all know in the horse industry, no one wants to ever hurt anything, but you're sure trying to beat your friends. Well, yeah. Your friends are highly competitive, right?

Brian Coleman (21:45):

Oh, for sure.

Chad Hewlett (21:46):

So in a good way. Yeah. So then go into just a little bit — Colleen and Faye find you. I don't want to relive a difficult story for you, but tell us a little bit about going to the hospital, all the things, so we can kind of put the timeline together, talk a little bit about Calgary in the end.

Brian Coleman (22:05):

Yeah. So I mean, basically they called the ambulance and at first they were going to bring a helicopter. The helicopter wasn't available, so they brought an ambulance and took me to Calgary. But yeah, so they stabilized me basically where I was — where they found me, as far as I'd made it. So the ambulance came, stabilized me there. We went into the Foothills hospital in Calgary, and then you're getting CAT scans and X-rays and everything. And that's the part that really gets a little more blurry because they give you some medication to ease the pain.

Chad Hewlett (22:45):

Ease the pain and set things up. Yeah. Just give us a high-level view of that — the CT scan revealed what? What did you manage to break?

Brian Coleman (22:59):

The C1, obviously, which is always a scary one to mess with. Then T3, T4, and T5 between my shoulder blades were broken, and then I broke a rib, partially collapsed a lung, broke my sternum. I think that's about it, but it was enough.

Chad Hewlett (23:21):

Yeah. And we're talking, again, eight weeks out from the largest horse show of the year — you're just really getting into training for your season, right? So go through a little bit of how long you were in the hospital, when you came home, all that sort of stuff. If you can, just give us some timeline of how we put this all together and what the team was doing.

Brian Coleman (23:41):

Right. So two weeks in the hospital and basically went through the whole ... Basically, the collapsed lung ended up being the ... And the bleeding in the lungs was probably the most medical thing that really kept me there. Everything else, they could stabilize — they really did nothing for the T3, T4, T5 between the shoulder blades. C1, you had to wear the neck brace, you're all collared up. But the lungs — once they got that stabilized, got my breathing back on track — then they wanted to make sure that was right. My oxygen levels were up to where they needed to be. And then we came home from the hospital and basically couldn't do anything for — weren't supposed to do anything for six weeks.

Chad Hewlett (24:35):

That would run us right up to —

Brian Coleman (24:37):

Right, up pretty close

Chad Hewlett (24:38):

to —

Brian Coleman (24:39):

Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (24:39):

Yeah.

Brian Coleman (24:40):

So lots of help. I mean, Colleen and Faye, obviously, they worked the horses a lot. And then we had Jason — he came and helped with the shoeing. So he took over my shoeing clients that I had, and actually he's kept them since then, those shoeing clients. And he still comes and helps me with a little bit of the shoeing. So it's worked out good.

Chad Hewlett (25:03):

Yeah. And I mean, without getting into this role — how does that work as far as your relationship with Colleen? You've been doing this together your entire career. I mean, does it cross your mind that is this the end of this deal, or were you like, "Nope, six weeks, I'll be out of this. No big deal." What was in your head, as far as — if you can talk to us about it?

Brian Coleman (25:28):

Oh, for sure. I mean, that was probably ... I guess you have to have a fairly strong mind to do this and decide you're going to do this for a living because you have to find a dollar under every rock because it's not an easy way to pay the bills. But with that said, that's probably the lowest point for me mentally because you don't know what the other side's going to bring. So I mean, this is how you pay the mortgage, just to keep food on the table and feed the kids. I mean, it's everything you do and you don't know what it's going to look like. You still have the hunger. The hunger's still there. And I think it's the hunger that makes you want to go back and do it again. If you lost the hunger, you'd probably come to your senses and realize there's better ways to make a living.

But no, the hunger part's still there — but yeah, you really had to ... Until you could actually do it again, you had to keep telling yourself, stay focused, keep your mind right. And in hindsight, that was the toughest part.

Chad Hewlett (26:38):

Yeah. Well, we're going to go through the fact that that all pays off in the end. And then you must have some sort of strategy in place as far as ... I know you guys for sure — in the sense of we're here, we want to go there, we need to do this. So Colleen was helping, Jason was shoeing, Faye was helping with the driving, and then at some point you must have thought you were going to feather back in. I mean, or did you have it set up to where Jason was going to drive the horses to Calgary and help you with your client? Or what were you guys ... Was it the ... You had one focal thought and that's what drove the whole thing, or did it kind of ...

Brian Coleman (27:23):

No, I would say that it wasn't near that strategic. I would say basically your hunger is going to push you to get back there and do it again. So we kept everything as-is, where-is, and we kept training. Faye would drive, Colleen would drive. They kept the horses conditioned. And when I could, then I got up and started driving the teams. And then I think it was about a week or so before Calgary — maybe two weeks before Calgary — we decided one day ... And this is a well-trained group. They were a veteran group, so it wasn't like they were giving you behavioural issues. I mean, they're rock solid. And so about two weeks before Calgary we said, "We're going to hook six today," and that's what we did. And it wasn't pretty, but it was a six. And from then on, when your mind knows that your body can do it, then you have a whole different outlook on it.

When I work my horses to show them, I'm very much a posture guy and very much a use-your-core-to-maximize-your-control type — and an ability to show your horses. A lot of that was gone, but that's stuff that can come back. Whereas once your mind knows that you can do it, then everything else started to come together and then you were just hungry. It drove the hunger level and you wanted to get up every day and go do it. Made you tired, made you hurt, but you wanted to do it.

Chad Hewlett (29:21):

Yeah. I can remember coming out and looking at the horses, because we always have our sort of pre-show preparation where the vet comes and we touch up a few things. And I remember coming and touching things up — I think it was middle to late June, right in there about the time that you were trying to just make that decision about how it was all going to come together — but yeah, horses were fit and felt like everybody was in the right place. Before you got on the way into Calgary, at that two-weeks-out mark from the horse show — because it's kind of about July 4th usually that we move in — yeah, you guys had pretty much decided you were going to be driving at that point. It felt good once you drove them?

Brian Coleman (30:04):

Oh, for sure. Once I drove them that first time, I thought I may not get the maximum out of me. I knew that was not going to happen. And I knew the group of horses — they would give me everything they could and still be in my corner. It wasn't like there were any Mavericks that were going to do anything to get you in a bad position. So I was pretty confident in them. I didn't have any rookies in there, so it was really good that way. And that was super for your mind because that just helps build that confidence back up again.

Chad Hewlett (30:45):

And you had those horses with the base?

Brian Coleman (30:47):

Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (30:47):

Who was coming to town that year? I don't remember in the sixes. Usually there's some — for sure there's provincial challenges — but there's beasts outside the province and sometimes Americans were there too.

Brian Coleman (31:02):

Not as much those years because that was kind of the comeback from COVID years. So it wasn't as deep as it had been. Now we got to Congress and things had opened up a little bit more by the end of the month. And that was a bit more of a challenge for sure as far as from a competitive aspect. But no, it was still a good show and still a solid show, but the horses looked apart and they were a group that when you went to town, they knew they were there and they wanted to get the job done.

Chad Hewlett (31:38):

Yeah. And as you were at the horse show — because usually about four to five days you guys were there — did you feel good when you got there? Was there still some butterflies, a little bit, because you hadn't got the ... Because I know you like to practise what you're doing and have your horses almost backed off, right? In the sense that they're trained up really nicely and everything. And with that little hiatus in there not being around, did you feel that you had them where you wanted them?

Brian Coleman (32:07):

Oh, for sure. Just with the work that Colleen and Faye had done on them, they were where they needed to be because — I say — they had that depth as a group. Now the group we have currently, they would maybe not do anything unruly, but they would push some parameters and not be as cohesive as that group was at that time. With that said, we're fortunate enough to have more talent now, and that was a talented group, but they were also mentally very strong, that group. And that helped. I mean, like I said, it would've been a different story if it had been a different group, but it was the perfect story because they really helped me get back to where I needed to be. Yeah.

Chad Hewlett (32:56):

And then what about client-wise? Because Messengers has been in the business for a long time and I can't remember — did Kirk come in for that horse show?

Brian Coleman (33:06):

Not that year. No, because of the COVID.

Chad Hewlett (33:08):

Yeah. I was going to say, so you were kind of dealing with your client at a distance — in the sense of over the internet, sending them pictures and all that sort of stuff — because they're usually super involved as much as they can be. All right. And did you feel quite a bit of support from them?

Brian Coleman (33:26):

Oh, 100%. The whole industry — our industry — it's mind-boggling the support that everyone has for everyone. I mean, there's been illnesses and injuries and stuff with the industry, and it's a very supportive industry. I mean, you know that when something happens, everyone's in your corner.

Chad Hewlett (33:49):

And just go — can you go through a little bit? I know personally, my slant on this — I can remember Colleen ... I went and watched because it was at Calgary and I was there working and doing things, so I went over and watched the final show or whatever. But Colleen texted me and it was a big rush of like, how did that ... I know how I felt. How did you feel? And I was just a side participant, right?

Brian Coleman (34:14):

You know what? Because it was definitely not the strongest that I've ever been with my group, but it did feel like the first time you won because it kind of was the first time you won. I mean, it was definitely — you know that there are things you need to work on, how to be stronger on yourself — but like I say, you can't replace that hunger that you have. And I mean, even young kids coming into the industry, I tell them, if you have the passion for it and you have a basic set of skills, you can make things happen. And that kind of reconfirmed that thought.

Chad Hewlett (34:59):

Yeah. Definitely wakes us up because you would've been — how old were you? That happened in 2022.

Brian Coleman (35:05):

So ... 53?

Chad Hewlett (35:06):

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's interesting how life hands us all those challenges for sure. Do you think — because we want to take the learning lessons from this as far as how it all comes together — I mean, a couple of older guys like us learn, but I really think we live in a world where that kind of resilience and just the sort of ... some bad things are going to happen to you and you're going to be better because of it. You talked a little bit about changing the training program and some of the things you'd take and you wouldn't take now. What else — is there anything else that came out of this? Let's distil some things that would be good for listeners to take away.

Brian Coleman (35:53):

Well, for myself, I mean, it emphasized that, hey, we're not getting any younger. And not with that as a criticism, but we work on things more extensively from a groundwork aspect, from one-on-one with our horses. Where I used to be able to muscle through some of those things, I have to have that better connection with all my groups. Now with the younger group that we have now, they do work on a lot of those smaller things to develop those skills sooner. Whereas a lot of times I had a horse that was good, another horse that was good, and some of those you deal with in a pair situation or four situation or a six situation where you could kind of muscle through those things. And not that they were really making mistakes, but if they were pushing some parameters, you could kind of muscle them back to where they needed to be.

Whereas anymore, I don't want to take those chances. So you want to make sure that they're more dialled in. With that said, you do get a better product sooner when you do it. And we're doing it now. So it does drive home what you already knew.

Chad Hewlett (37:13):

Yeah. So you'd say it's a little bit of finesse. Am I overusing that word or — what would you say? Yeah, because I've always found you to be a patient person when I'm here. I tell people all the time, I'm like, "I really wish I had Brian's patience." Yeah.

Brian Coleman (37:32):

Yeah. Yeah. It's patience and it's just ... Yeah, and I don't think we really got impatient before, but you're trying to do too much in a short period of time. So, well, if this horse needed one-on-one time and this horse needed one-on-one time, they might as well do it together because we've got other things to do. So that's where it kind of would ... I wouldn't really necessarily say you were being impatient, but you did things because you could. Whereas now, if you know that it could cause you to be outside of your comfort zone, you just do them one-on-one and then you put them together. So it's — come back to your

Chad Hewlett (38:15):

foundation.

Brian Coleman (38:15):

Yeah, exactly. Or just emphasize the foundation more and then push that parameter.

Chad Hewlett (38:23):

And on a team standpoint or a life standpoint for you as far as a person, did it change anything that way too? Or is it ... I mean, I think for me, the horses oftentimes parallel my human experience too. And did that change anything for you, or is it just like —

Brian Coleman (38:41):

Make yourself slow things down a little bit more. And I know we still haven't ... We've gone back to doing too much again because we're trying to cram too much into too short a period of time, but we still do try and take a little more time. We'd get up in the morning — I'd shoe in the morning, train all day, shoe during evening chores, go in, have something to eat, come back out, shoe horses till midnight. And I don't do that anymore because you can spend time with the family, spend time with your wife. I mean, spend time doing the people things that you should be doing.

Chad Hewlett (39:24):

Yeah. Yeah. The training still happens.

Brian Coleman (39:26):

Oh yeah.

Chad Hewlett (39:36):

Well, Brian, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this and just going through this and discussing situations and how things come together, and what horses teach us about life — but about ourselves too. And I don't know, working with the creatures that we love the most. I mean, we all love a good dog and cat, but nothing beats a horse.

Brian Coleman (39:57):

No, I know.

Chad Hewlett (39:58):

So thanks for joining us and paying attention — or being a part of this episode. Until next time.