ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Gilbert the golden retriever was home with Democratic leader and Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband when a gunman fatally shot the couple and mortally wounded their beloved dog. And he was with them again Friday when the Hortmans laid in state at the Capitol in St. Paul.
He is all but certainly the first dog to receive the honor, having been put down after being badly injured in the attack. There is no record of any other nonhuman ever lying in state, and Melissa Hortman, a former state House speaker still leading the chamber’s Democrats, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.
Hundreds of people waited outside the Capitol before they were allowed into the rotunda at noon, with the line to pay respects snaking out of the building and along an adjacent street. The Hortmans’ caskets were decorated with flowers and folded U.S. and Minnesota flags. Two pedestals sat between them, one for an arrangement of flowers and the other, for the gold-colored urn holding Gilbert’s remains.
Gilbert has received a flood tributes like Hortman and her husband, Mark, ever since news spread online that he had been shot, too, in the attack early on the morning of June 14 by a man posing as a police officer. The accused assassin, Vance Boelter, is also charged with shooting a prominent Democratic state senator and his wife, and authorities say Boelter visited two other Democratic lawmakers’ homes without encountering them.
The dog’s injuries were severe enough that surviving family members had him put to sleep at a veterinary clinic in the Hortmans’ hometown of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb. The clinic, Allied Emergency Veterinary Service, called Gilbert “sweet and gentle” and “deeply loved” on a GoFundMe site raising money for the care of local police dogs.
Hours after the shootings, a nonprofit that trains service dogs, Helping Paws Inc., posted a picture on Facebook of Gilibert with the murdered Minnesota lawmaker, both smiling. The Hortmans provided a foster home to dogs to help train them to be service animals, and one of them, Minnie, had graduated on to assisting a veteran.
But Helping Paws said in its post that Gilbert “eventually career changed.”
One of Hortman’s fellow lawmakers, Democratic Rep. Erin Koegel, told The Associated Press that the golden retriever had “flunked out of school” and that “Melissa wanted him to fail so she could keep him.” Gilbert had been deemed ”too friendly” to be a service dog.
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