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 lay 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 to pay their respects. Two pedestals sat between the Hortmans’ caskets, one for an arrangement of flowers and the other, for the gold-colored urn holding Gilbert’s remains.
A memorial outside the House chamber for the Hortmans included a box of Milk-Bone dog biscuits with a sticky note saying, “For the best boy, Gilbert.”
“We’ve all had family, pets, and it’s tragic to have the whole family lost in in a moment like that,” said Kacy Deschene, who came to the Capitol from the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin.
Gilbert has received a flood of 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.
Volunteers from a nonprofit that trains service dogs, Helping Paws Inc., provided a little canine therapy for waiting mourners Friday at the Capitol, working the crowd with cheerful golden retrievers. The Hortmans provided a foster home to dogs as part of the animals’ Helping Paws training, and one of them, Minnie, had graduated on to assisting a veteran.
Helping Paws said in a Facebook post hours after the shootings that Gilbert “career changed.” Gilbert had been deemed ”too friendly” to be a service dog, KARE-TV reported.
Democratic state Rep. Erin Koegel, told The Associated Press after the shootings that the golden retriever had “flunked out of school” and “Melissa wanted him to fail so she could keep him.”
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.