Partners


Great Aunt Mae Mundwiler Schlegel, the sister of Grandfather Ralph Eugene, grew up on the Mundwiler Farm in Ortonville, Minnesota. After living in New Jersey for a time, she settled in California where she raised and raced Arabian horses.

Vol. No. 18, Issue No. 3 August 1989
A m e r i c a n    E n d u r a n c e   R i d e    C o n f e r e n c e
E  N  D  U  R  A  N  C  E    N  E  W  S
 

Partners
By Julie Suhr

If you thumb through your 1988 AERC Yearbook you will find a lot of pictures and stories about outstanding AERC members and their equally outstanding horses. You will read about unheard of accomplishments...ultra yearly mileages, astounding number of wins by one horse/rider team. Broken speed records. Broken mileage records. But if you turn to page 68 of your yearbook you will find buried among the “S”s in the West Region a more remarkable story than any of the above. The last name is Schlegel. The first is Mae. 3040 miles. So...?? Now tum to page 52 and under 3,000 Mile Horses you will find the name Khala Shuraka. 3040 miles. So...?? Sounds like a good horse and rider team, that’s all.

There is something terribly special about this team that statistics in a yearbook don’t tell. Their combined ages....103 years! Their most recent achievements......100 miles in two days in the most remote region in the United States. How did they get there? Well, seventy-nine-year-old Mae drove them, of course. Truck trailer and twenty-four-year-old horse up the insane California freeways and then into the isolated Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada where if you break down you could sit a week waiting for another vehicle to come to your aid (unless there happens to be an endurance ride in the area). Setting up camp with “Pard” in his electric fence took a little doing, but in short order the two were settled in and ready for the next day’s ride. 

Totally undiscouraged by heat, dust and wind, not to mention the uncertainty of finding your way up a narrow canyon with no trail, this undaunted couple returned to camp in the upper third of fifty riders. The next day, another gorgeous fifty miles, but instead of staying low, the trail climbed four thousand feet in various roller coaster stages. Only thirty-one of the original fifty accepted that day’s challenges. Mae was one of them. She and Pard came in prancing, for Mae has never been able to make Pard walk more than about three steps at a time. He prances. She cajoles, begs, and pleads with him because her arms are getting tired. You look at the two of them and wonder what they must have been twenty years ago, because they don’t seem to be taking life very easily now. Enthusiasm is the only word for them. They both have it in abundance.

Mae’s early love of horses developed from her Minnesota girlhood when driving a buggy and riding buggy horses made for a happy childhood. Leaving the farm she became a private duty nurse, an X-ray technician and a professional masseuse in New Jersey. She arrived in the San Fernando Valley with her husband and the first of her three daughters in the early 1940’s with the desire to have horses in her life once again. After reading “And Miles To Go”, the story of Witez II, she knew it had to be an Arabian. A daughter with severe arthritis forced a move to the desert, where a mustang horse provided the therapy to make a young child walk again. A separation from her husband of twenty-two years followed.

In the early 1950’s when she lived near Palm Springs she heard of a dispersal sale of the Kellogg Arabians at Pomona and returned home distressed over her failure to buy the stallion Ferzon who sold for $500. However, in San Diego she was able to buy her first Arabian, the grand mare, Sura, AHR #781. She had always wanted a chestnut colt she could name after a storybook stallion, Kanana. So she took her mare to a Witez II son and eleven months later had her chestnut colt who was promptly named Kanana. He became the sire of Music, the dam of Khala Shuraka, Desert Partner, or as most of us know him, just plain Pard. Twenty-four years later, this duo continues to partner in the finest sense of the word.

In the early 1960’s Mae entered her first NATRC ride and a year or two later missed being the Lightweight Champion. The following year Mae won the Lightweight Championship while her husband, Fritz, was the Reserve heavyweight Champion. She continued with NATRC until the early 1970’s when a move to Santa Rosa introduced her to her first endurance ride. She has ridden many horses, but Pard is the one endurance riders associate with Mae when they hear her name. In 1985, the then 75- year- old Mae and 20-year-old Pard entered and completed the Race of Champions in Colorado. They were ready for it because the faithful couple had cut their teeth by choosing the Tevis Cup Ride as their first 100 miler in 1974. They did it again in 1981.

Dunlap became home in 1976. Her second husband died five years ago and she has remained in that locale with her daughter Susan and her beloved animals to keep her company. Resides raising fox terriers, a large vegetable and flower garden, she now has a pinto filly, a Paso Fino gelding on consignment and a Paso Fino mare due to foal in September. She thinks the Paso gait will be easy on her when she gets old. Pack trips into the Kings Canyon bring her repeated joy. A golf cart scoots her back and forth to her daughter’s when she is not on one of her horses. You might say she could look back on a full and rewarding life. However, that is not Mae. She’s looking forward to more trails. So if you happen to meet her out there, all five foot two of her, look up. It is the only way you will find her.