Around age 40, Malibu resident Colin Dangaard began experiencing a mid-life crisis.
“I was sitting in my Jacuzzi near Zuma and realized I hardly spent any time at home.” After an expensive divorce, he wanted to change his life.
In 1982, he went on assignment to cover the on-location filming of the Australian cowboy movie “The Man from Snowy River.” Watching some footage, he noticed close-ups of Australian stock saddles on the horses.
“A light went off in my head,” Dangaard, who was born and raised in the Australian outback, said. “I decided to sell Australian saddles to Americans and ordered a half-dozen saddles to sell in the U.S.”
His fellow Australians told him, “You’ll never get the Yanks out of their tanks” (what Australians call our big Western saddles). But, because “The Man From Snowy River” turned into one of the best horse movies ever made, it helped sell the idea of the Aussie-style saddle to riders in this country.
“The Aussie stock saddle has knee pads in the front so you don’t fly off if the horse stops suddenly … it’s a very hard saddle to fall out of,” Dangaard said. “The [U.S.] western saddle is big and heavy, and made mainly for roping.
“I made a ton of money right away. I was really, really enjoying it, and started designing my own saddles and having a good time again.” He moved to a horse property on Kanan Road, which is where his business endeavor, The Australian Stock Saddle Company, operates.
Dangaard learned about saddles at an early age Down Under; the U.S. isn’t the only country with a “wild west” in its past — Australia has one, too. In fact, Australian cowboys (“stockmen”) rounded up cattle from 500,000-acre open-range parcels far longer into the 20th century than their U.S. counterparts, and often evolved their own way of doing things, including a distinctive style of riding saddle found nowhere else in the world.
Dangaard grew up riding in those saddles in the Australian outback from a very young age. By the time he was 14 years old, he spent months at a time in the bush, capturing abandoned horses (“brumbies”) for resale.
When he needed to buy a new saddle, Dangaard could only afford a beat-up, used saddle that needed work. A local saddle-maker spent the next year teaching Dangaard the craft of building and repairing saddles. When he was out one day riding with his rebuilt saddle, a man came up and offered him a “fortune” for it. That was Dangaard’s entry into the saddle business.
He was a somewhat unusual cowboy because he was also an avid reader and prolific writer, whose “pulp-fiction” short stories were published almost weekly in various Australian magazines. He got his first newspaper job when he was 17 years old, moved up the ladder and eventually came to the U.S. as a feature writer for the Miami Herald.
When Rupert Murdoch offered Dangaard a position as editor of The Star based in Hollywood, he moved to California and spent much of his time flying around the world, covering various celebrity stories, including coverage of “The Man From Snowy River.”
Although he imports Australian saddles, Dangaard also does research and development for his own line. His latest success story is the “bareback saddle” that weighs only 12 pounds, and was based on some of the world’s first saddles by Attila the Hun.
It took Dangaard two years of experimenting with new, lightweight materials and testing his prototype saddles on his own horses before he was satisfied with the design.
“The new saddle is a sensation,” he said. “It spreads weight over the horse’s back and decreases the number of pounds per square inch carried. I can’t make ‘em fast enough.” His new best seller is assembled right here in Malibu.
Dangaard has also designed specialty leather horse items for U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, Border Patrol, Vandenberg Air Force Base and other special patrols around the world. Many of the specialty horse items are designed to hold a specific weapon or firearm on a saddle.
Even though he’s back in the saddle again, the passion for writing never left Dangaard. His novel “Talking with Horses,” the first of a trilogy, was released three years ago.
More information can be found at Dangaard’s website.
