Jack Miller and his horse are members of Michigan’s Lapeer County Mounted Posse.

For a day job, Jack and his wife Sharon own Industrial Cleaning Supply in Waterford, Mich.

There was a time when Jack only got around to riding his horse about five times a year. Then a neighbor suggested that Jack join the county posse so he could spend more time on his horse. Now, 16 years later, he rides at the front of the posse in parades, carrying a flag.

You can’t casually decide to join a posse. You have to be qualified to ride, you have to make a major time commitment, and you must have a good horse. “Plus, a committee of three from our posse goes to a prospective member’s home. We watch them ride, and check out their barn, horse, and saddle.”

The posse’s most dramatic activity is making rescue missions. Sadly, by the time the posse gets a call to perform a rescue mission, most other search possibilities have been exhausted. On an emergency call-out, the riders get a one-hour notice to assemble and start the mission. Jack’s posse does horseback searches to help find missing children, adults, and even elderly folks who wander away from their nursing homes. Once, they rescued a mushroom hunter who had a heart attack in the woods.

The posse is a non-profit, volunteer organization. Members of the group raise money to support the group’s activities. The posse is paid $12 to $15 per hour, per horse and rider to perform crowd control activities at summer festivals, county fairs, and races, Jack said.

During some festivals, the 24 riders in the posse do double duty: they perform in a parade in the morning, and do patrol work until the wee hours of the next morning. Parade duty is demanding. The riders and the horses have to practice the parade routines at least twice a month because the riders have to get the horses to respond to different commands and carry out complicated choreography. “It’s a lot like a calvary performance,” Jack said.

When the posse does its patrol work for towns and civic groups, “They want us around the beer tent, especially at closing time,” he said. “People are usually afraid of a horse. When there’s a street fight, all you have to do is ride your horse into the middle of the fight and it ends. What they don’t know is that the horse is usually more scared than the fighters are,” he said. “Except, once we had a guy who stumbled out of the beer tent and asked for a horseback ride to his car.”

Drunk and disorderly people aren’t the biggest problem the posse has to face during a festival. Flags are a huge problem. “When we perform in a parade, we carry Michigan and U.S. flags,” Jack said. “Some horses are petrified of the flags.”

To get the horses past the fear of flags, Jack said they have desensitizing sessions once a year. “We try to get the horses used to anything they might encounter. We’ll build fires, shoot off firecrackers, and expose the horses to wheelchairs.” Wheelchairs? Apparently, when a horse is guarding a street corner during a marathon, and an athlete in a wheelchair passes by, it can really spook the horses.

Besides helping the community, Jack says the camaraderie is fantastic.
“The highlight of the year is a five-day camp-out and ride in northern Michigan. Once we even took our horses out to Mackinaw Island on the ferry,” Jack said.

One year the posse stayed at a bunkhouse during the camp-out. Inspired by the old cowboy movies, a posse member asked a buddy to hold his horse while he got up on the bunkhouse roof to mount the horse. So, the guy gets on the roof, gets ready to jump on the horse, and, well, all I can say is it was a hard landing.

Thank heavens it’s not all work and no play for the Lapeer County Mounted Posse.

Gretchen Roufs, a 15-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns Auxiliary Marketing Services of San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “freetime,” contact her at (210) 601-4572 or via e-mail.




POSTED ON: 8/1/2002