Members of the American Endurance Ride Conference inducted Dave Rabe into the nonprofit organization’s Hall of Fame, along with Tulip, the ultra-long distance half-Arabian gelding owned by Dr. Les Carr, at the annual convention last month in Reno, Nev.

Also winning one of endurance’s top prizes, the Pard’ners Award, was Robert Ribley and his endurance horse, Tari.

Rabe, a retired postmaster from Carson City, Nev., is currently third on the list of high-mileage riders in the organization’s 38-year history, with 46,512 miles through 2009. Those numbers include 862 ride finishes—200 of them in the top 10, with 55 completions of 100-mile, one-day rides.

“I guess I like to ride more than most of you,” said Rabe to the hundreds of endurance riders assembled at the national awards banquet.

Tulip finished the 2009 endurance ride season with 21,155 miles. As the first endurance horse to surpass 20,000 miles, the 21-year old equine athlete’s Hall of Fame induction was well deserved.

Since Tulip’s first endurance ride in 1993, he has averaged more than 1,200 miles of sanctioned endurance rides every year, an incredible average considering the minimum length of these rides is 50 miles.

“Tulip shows no sign of aging when I see him on the trail and looks like he will go on forever,” said John Parke, who nominated Tulip for the year-end award. “Tulip is amazingly tolerant of quirky people and ponies and is a true character in his own right. We have ridden so much together that I always relax a little riding next to him out of some inner recognition that I am really out on the endurance trail where I belong.”

A coveted AERC award, the Pard’ners award, named in honor of the late Mae Schlegel and her horse Pard, honors the horse-and-rider team that exemplifies friendship, enthusiasm and sportsmanship. While Tari is now deceased, he and Robert Ribley, a longtime endurance rider from Grass Valley, Calif., had a long and storied career together that made them deserving of the award.

Tari, a ¾-Arabian, ¼-Standardbred gelding, started 116 rides with Robert between 1985 and 1994, and finished 116 times. Of those, 25 rides were 100-mile, one-day rides.

Tari’s last ride was the 20 Mule Team 100, when Tari was 27 years old. “To get a 27-year-old horse through a tough 100-mile takes teamwork. That’s why Robert and Tari are Pard’ners,” said nominator Mike Tracy of Hollister, Calif. “However competitive they were, they always had good sportsmanship. As a rookie myself, back in 1989, I was always asking Robert questions during a ride. Even though we were competing against one another, he never failed to give me good advice.