{"id":19840,"date":"2025-06-27T19:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19840\/"},"modified":"2025-06-27T19:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T19:21:08","slug":"minnesota-honors-beloved-dog-alongside-slain-lawmaker-and-husband","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/19840\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota honors beloved dog alongside slain lawmaker and husband"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gilbert was at home during the fatal shootings of two family members, and when the prominent Minnesota legislator and her husband lay in state Friday<\/a> at the state Capitol, the golden retriever was there beside them.<\/p>\n

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 the late state Rep. Melissa Hortman<\/a>, the state House\u2019s top Democrat and a former speaker, 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. <\/p>\n

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\u2019 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\u2019s remains. <\/p>\n

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\u2019 homes without encountering them.<\/p>\n

The dog\u2019s injuries were severe enough that surviving family members had him put to sleep at a veterinary clinic in the Hortmans\u2019 hometown of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb. The clinic, Allied Emergency Veterinary Service, called Gilbert \u201csweet and gentle\u201d and \u201cdeeply loved\u201d on a GoFundMe site raising money for the care of local police dogs. <\/p>\n

Hours after the shootings, a nonprofit that trains service dogs, Helping Paws Inc., posted a picture<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

But Helping Paws said in its post that Gilbert \u201ceventually career changed.\u201d <\/p>\n

One of Hortman\u2019s fellow lawmakers, Democratic Rep. Erin Koegel, told The Associated Press that the golden retriever had \u201cflunked out of school\u201d and that \u201cMelissa wanted him to fail so she could keep him.\u201d Gilbert had been deemed \u201dtoo friendly\u201d to be a service dog, KARE-TV reported. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gilbert was at home during the fatal shootings of two family members, and when the prominent Minnesota legislator…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[4654,18599,57,18598,3663,18597,3669,50,15228,80,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-19840","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"category-us","9":"tag-dogs","10":"tag-erin-koegel","11":"tag-general-news","12":"tag-melissa-hortman","13":"tag-minnesota","14":"tag-minnesota-state-government","15":"tag-mn-state-wire","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-oddities","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-u-s-news","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114756955907116820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}