On Aug. 23, 2018, Doc walked up the path at the Detroit Memorial West cemetery toward a graveside. An empty saddle, signifying a missing rider, rested on the horse's back.
Doc, a Tennessee Walker, was brought out of retirement that day to be at the cemetery to pay tribute to his longtime partner, Sgt. Lee Eric Smith, who was being laid to rest at age 55. But when Doc died on Sept. 10, 2021, at age 26, unlike Smith, there was no cemetery to lay to rest the 1,200-pound animal who devoted 11 years of service to the Wayne County Sheriff's Office Mounted Division.
“When I became involved in the mounted unit, I asked the guys, ‘What do we do with them when they pass?' and someone said, ‘We dig a hole and push them into it,' ” Sgt. Lacey Polderdyke of the Wayne County Sheriff's Office Mounted Division told the Free Press. “That horrified me.”
It bothered Polderdyke so much that she approached the president of a cemetery dedicated to military and service dogs to see whether he would bend the rules to allow horses to be interred there. After some consideration, he said yes. So starting later this year, the Michigan War Dog Memorial Cemetery will open its grounds for service horses' remains to be interred alongside those of service dogs .
“One of the reasons we set up the memorial is because the government won’t take care of the military dogs when they pass away,” said Phil Weitlauf, president and director of Michigan War Dog Memorial Inc.. “We found the state and county won’t take care of their mounted horses when they die either. We should honor them the same way we honor the canines.”
‘It's a dog cemetery, so I don't know.'
The mounted division uses horses for such things as search and rescue, patrolling areas, crowd control, educating kids about horses, and in parades and other events.
They are working animals, but the idea of including the horses at the war dog cemetery initially gave Weitlauf pause.
As the Free Press reported in July 2023, the Michigan War Dog Memorial is a nonprofit that Weitlauf started 12 years ago to operate a cemetery of the same name in Lyon Township. It is an old pet cemetery in western Oakland County that he and hundreds of volunteers restored. The 2-acre cemetery's purpose is to honor all the military working dogs, police and other service dogs with monuments, special headstones and elaborate military funeral services.
Polderdyke takes part in those services because she is a member of the Wayne County Honor Guard, which stands present as retired Oakland County Sheriff's Detective Dave Wurtz — wearing a traditional kilt — plays the bagpipes to mark the start of the ceremony to inter a service dog. He leads a procession of 12 dogs, mostly German shepherds, called the K9 Salute Team. The dogs escort the deceased dog's handler, who is carrying their dog's ashes in a box, to the area in front of the podium where the ceremony and eulogy take place.
Polderdyke approached Weitlauf in late summer 2023 asking, “if I can get the horses cremated — which I knew I could — would you allow us to bring them here so that they can be honored the way canines are honored?”
Weitlauf was reluctant to commit. The site is the resting place for some unique animals throughout history, but mostly heroic military, police and service dogs. It has become arguably the most prestigious place in the country for a working dog to be interred, Weitlauf and some of the handlers who traveled from other states to lay their dogs to rest have said.
Since the cemetery's inception, 90 service dogs' ashes from all over the country have been interred there, Weitlauf said. The cost is free to the handlers because Michigan War Dog Memorial pays with donations for the uniform headstones that line the area. It costs about $1,000 to inter one dog. He said there are five more ceremonial burials set for this year.
“It is a dog cemetery, so I don’t know,” Weitlauf said, as he pondered Polderdyke's request. “We kicked it around a little bit, but didn’t make a commitment.”
Then some deputies from the Oakland County Sheriff's Office mounted division asked Weitlauf whether the cemetery would allow their mounts to be honored there, he said. That brings the number of requested interments to nine service horses, Weitlauf said.
Weitlauf said, “I threw it to our leadership committee this spring and we decided, ‘Yeah we can do this.’ “
A call to the equine community for help
The Michigan War Dog Memorial expects it will begin the interment of the service horses in late fall. From Wayne County, there will be Touch Up, Denver and, of course, Doc.
Before the interments, Weitlauf said his organization will install a memorial wall with photo-etch pictures of the mounts in action.
The site is landlocked and will eventually run out of room, so only police and military dogs ' remains go in the ground now — and they must be cremated first to conserve the limited space, Weitlauf said. In 2019, the group bought a columbarium with 96 niches to inter ashes for other kinds of service dogs . Weitlauf said the group will purchase a columbarium specially for the horses too. He estimated the cost of the columbarium and wall to be about $18,000. He will be organizing fundraisers this summer and will reach out to the equine community to collectively sponsor this mission.
As for the ceremonies, Weitlauf said they will follow the same pattern as those done for dogs and be free to the horse's riders. The only difference he said will be, “instead of the Salute Team of dogs, we’ll have eight horses do it.”
A closeness like family
Smith's widow, Simone Smith, is grateful that her late husband's mounts will be honored. Smith trained and worked with all three horses: Doc, Denver and Touch Up. The ashes for all three horses are currently with Restore The Horse Foundation President Julie Raisch, who cared for Doc and Denver in retirement, and trains the current Wayne County Mounted Unit, Polderdyke said.
As the Free Press reported in August 2018, Smith, of Redford, was killed while on duty. A black SUV driven by a Detroit man, Desmond Robinson, struck Smith while he was jogging along Hines Drive in Westland after having just left the stables, still on duty. Robinson was sentenced to 4½-15 years in prison. Smith was a 26-year veteran of the force and had recently filed paperwork to retire.
Simone Smith said her late husband would be so pleased that Doc's remains will be properly laid to rest.
“He rode Doc his entire career and he retired Doc about three months before he was about to retire too. He wanted Doc to retire before he did so that Doc wouldn’t get sick,” Simone Smith said. “Doc was his horse. He was like a part of our family. He actually has some of Doc’s hair inside the coffin with him. That’s how close they were.”
The mare who ‘wasn't just an animal'
Wayne County Sheriff Deputy Dave Ethridge understands that bond. Ethridge rode Touch Up — a Tennessee Walker that the UAW donated to the county in 2009 — for the past year. He was there when she died on March 27 at age 26.
“It was tremendously difficult. I definitely miss her,” Ethridge said. He considers it a “pretty respectful thing to do” to open the war dog cemetery to horses.
Touch Up offered Ethridge a lot of comfort this past year as he battles cancer, he said. His fondest memory of her was an affinity for candy, saying, “she always knew she’d get a peppermint candy from me.”
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Polderdyke said Touch Up was the “mama of the herd” of Wayne County mounts.
“She was the boss mare as we called her,” Polderdyke said. “She was a machine. She would go through any obstacle we threw at her when other horses would be timid. As soon as they saw Touch Up go through an obstacle, they would follow her. She was so friendly, affectionate and reliable. Anything we took them through or wanted them to get exposed to — Hogan might not do it, the younger ones might not do it — but Touch Up would go through it.”
As for Denver, he and Doc were pals who participated in many children's events together, Polderdyke said. He retired in the fall of 2009 due to budget cuts within the Wayne County Sheriff's Office. Denver worked with the Detroit Police Department's Mounted Unit for a short time before he was re-retired due to a back injury, Polderdyke said. He died at age 20 after years in retirement at Horses Haven in Howell, where Doc also spent his retirement.
When it comes time to lay Touch Up to rest at the Michigan War Dog Memorial cemetery, Ethridge promises, “I will be there.”
“Lacey (Polderdyke) wants me to say something, but I don’t know. It’s going to be an emotional day,” Ethridge said. “Everybody’s like, ‘It’s just an animal.' Well, she wasn’t just an animal to me. We have dogs at home and they’re all rescues and I had to put those down, and it’s the same with a horse. You’re losing a loved one.”
For people who want to attend a ceremonial burial for a service dog, Michigan War Dog Memorial posts the dates and times on its Facebook page and accepts donations at www.mwdm.org.
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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @ jlareauan .
