Horses and riders come in all shapes and sizes, but it’s a finely made, fitted saddle that brings the two together to make them one.

Two of the few remaining High Desert saddle makers are Hans Biglajzer, 85, who began his apprenticeship as a Nazi prisoner in Auschwitz death camps during World War II; and Kevin Urbach, 48, who grew up with a horse under him on the family cattle ranch near Burns.

Both live in Bend, and they have built more than 1,500 custom saddles between them.

Biglajzer specializes in what Americans call “English” saddles, though he says “they’re just called saddles in the rest of the world.” They come in as many as 40 different types, depending on the style of riding, and include racing, jumping, dressage and police saddles.

Urbach, who also competed in some rodeos in his youth — “It didn’t take me long to find out bronc riding wasn’t for me,” he said with a grin — specializes in the cowboy’s workstation, the Western saddle.

Quality saddles must first fit the horse and that depends on its core, the saddle tree.

“If you don’t have a good foundation, you don’t have a good house,” Urbach said. The bars — tree points on an English saddle — must be wide enough to avoid pinching the horse’s back and mustn’t extend back beyond its rib cage. There should be as much contact between the bars and the horse’s back as possible without creating pressure points.

Biglajzer and Urbach both keep an inventory of saddle trees in typical sizes, which they can place on a horse’s back to assure optimal fit before building a saddle for a client. When a client lives too far away to make fitting the horse in person practical, both use a cast form of the horse’s back to assure the fit of the tree.

Fitting the saddle to the rider depends on the rider’s stature.

“After so many years, I can fit a saddle to a rider by asking how tall they are and how much they weigh,” Biglajzer said. The critical elements for a good fit are the length of the saddle from front to back, the placement of the rider’s “seat bones” in the saddle itself and the distance to the stirrups.

Once the fitting is done, construction begins.

While saddle trees today can be made of plastic, fiberglass or even carbon fiber, Urbach and Biglajzer both insist on trees made of wood from specialty saddle tree makers.

“My saddle trees are made the same way they were 150 years ago,” Urbach said, “shaped wood covered in hide.” Biglajzer’s saddle trees are made in a similar way and imported from England.

Only superior hides are acceptable to both in building a saddle, which takes about 50 hours to complete.

The best saddles have leather finely cut and shaped with stitches recessed in grooves to minimize the friction on saddle, horse and rider.

Both Biglajzer and Urbach prefer “breathable” wool padding to the synthetics common on cheaper saddles today.

Urbach is known for the fine leather tooling decorating his finished products. Tooling can double the time it takes to deliver the saddle to the client and more than double its cost. Biglajzer was so busy over the years he “never had time for (tooling leather).”

“You get what you pay for” can be especially true for unsophisticated saddle buyers.

“Saddle shops are mostly small and can’t stock much inventory or put much money into what they have,” Biglajzer said. “The owners have never made a saddle, but their job is to sell you one.”

Urbach is even more direct: “There is a lot of junk out there. You can go to some local Western stores and buy a saddle for $350, and there’s a reason for that. They’re made in Indonesia or someplace like that, the leather is like cardboard and the work is bad.”

Urbach’s work can cost $2,500 to $3,000 for a basic saddle, and up to $6,000 or more for saddles with extensive leather tooling.

Urbach says their is one common flaw in many inexpensive Western saddles buyers should look for. “Too much rock in the bar,” which occurs when the bars of the saddle tree are too rounded, creating pressure points which will hurt the horse. Nothing can be done to fix that other than replacing the saddle tree, which means rebuilding the entire saddle.

Still, Urbach says good production saddles can be found, though they might not fit perfectly. Any saddle should be tried on the horse and by the rider for fit before purchase. Even then the fit for the horse can change with its conditioning as it loses weight or gains muscle mass.

“People riding on weekends don’t need to be that concerned with saddle fit,” he said. “If (the saddle) is hurting the horse, change it.” If a horse flinches when pressure is applied to the saddle, then it’s hurting, and the fit is probably poor. “But a lot of times you can fix (the fit) with a change in pads.”

Those who work with a particular horse on a daily basis — such as rodeo cowboys, jockeys and trainers, and dressage riders — would be particularly concerned with horse fit.

Neither Biglajzer nor Urbach need to advertise to stay busy, though Urbach recently created a Facebook account and website. Instead, they rely on word of mouth from their hundreds of customers to market their saddles and services, which includes saddle and tack repair.

Both proudly sign, date and place their maker’s mark on every saddle they finish.