What Gilbert left behind

Doges Editorial · 2026-06-14 · 5 min read

A year after Minnesota legislators Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed, nine golden retriever puppies named for their dog Gilbert are training to become service dogs for veterans — a living continuation of the work the Hortmans believed in.

Inside the Helping Paws facility in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, nine golden retriever puppies are learning to be brave. On this particular Thursday in early June, two of them — Griffin and Gertie — are chasing each other through a foam ball pit in a room designed specifically for the chaos of young dogs. They tumble. They bite. They are, at this moment, simply puppies.

In two years, they will open refrigerator doors. They will turn on light switches. They will alert a veteran when anxiety rises, and brace a first responder who can no longer feel steady in a crowd. This is the litter that Minnesota lawmakers funded in the memory of Melissa and Mark Hortman, and their dog Gilbert — reported by MPR News on June 11, 2026.

A dog named Gilbert

Gilbert came to the Hortman family by a circuitous route. He was bred and trained at Helping Paws, a nonprofit outside Minneapolis that pairs assistance dogs with people living with physical disabilities, veterans, and first responders managing PTSD. Gilbert, a golden retriever, moved through the program's rigorous curriculum — and washed out. Not for lack of intelligence. For excess of affection.

"It wasn't his journey to be a service dog, and we respect that," said Alyssa Golob, executive director of Helping Paws. "In my head now, I kind of feel like that Gilbert was where he was supposed to be with Melissa and Mark. He helped them through the stress of their lives."

Melissa Hortman was Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Mark Hortman worked alongside her in public life. Between their jobs and their advocacy and the particular intensity of legislative sessions, Gilbert was the constant — the one at home who didn't care about the session calendar, who needed a walk at the same time every evening regardless of what was on the floor.

June 2025

On June 4, 2025, Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed in an attack at their Brooklyn Park home. Gilbert was killed with them. The killings shook Minnesota and drew national attention. The Hortmans had been public servants in the truest sense — people who showed up, worked hard, and believed in the idea that government could make things better.

In the weeks after their deaths, thousands of people donated to Helping Paws in their memory. The donations created the Hortman Heroes Fund, which will finance the training of future service dogs. And during the 2026 legislative session — Melissa Hortman's colleagues working in the chamber she once led — lawmakers allocated funding for an entire litter of puppies to train in the Hortmans' honor.

Donations came our way, and that's wonderful, but it was really about people wanting to walk in Melissa and Mark's footsteps. Now we have a wait list of people who want to take on a puppy.

— Alyssa Golob, executive director, Helping Paws

The nine puppies

The Guided by Gilbert litter was born on March 28, 2026, from a Helping Paws breeding dog named Petra. Nine puppies, each with a name beginning with G: Griffin, Gertie, and seven others who will spend the next two years learning to be someone's lifeline. On May 31, they left the Eden Prairie facility for volunteer trainer placements across Minnesota — families who will raise them for two years before the dogs return for their final certification.

Graduating from Helping Paws requires mastering more than 70 commands. The dogs learn to brace their handler if balance is lost, to retrieve dropped items, to alert to medical events, to stay calm in hospitals and courtrooms and grocery stores. The puppies in the ball pit don't know any of this yet. They know that the foam balls make a satisfying sound when jumped on.

Every time I watch the puppies play, it kind of gets me teared up a little bit. These puppies, two years from now, are going to change somebody's life. You have no idea who they are going to, but somebody's life is going to be changed because of this cute, silly puppy.

— Alyssa Golob, executive director, Helping Paws

What service dogs are trained to understand

Helping Paws focuses on two populations: people with physical disabilities who need a dog to assist with daily tasks, and veterans or first responders managing post-traumatic stress. The two needs are different, and the training reflects that. A dog working with a wheelchair user learns a different choreography than one attuned to the psychological rhythms of a soldier who flinches at crowds.

What both populations share is that the dog becomes a kind of external nervous system — a presence that reads the room, maintains a routine, and doesn't react to what everyone else is reacting to. Gilbert, too friendly to pass his certification, provided some version of this for the Hortmans without the official credential. The unofficial ones sometimes matter as much.

The Melissa, Mark, and Gilbert effect

Golob calls the community response that followed the killings the "Melissa, Mark and Gilbert effect." The donations came from people who had never heard of Helping Paws before June 2025. Some were former constituents who admired the Hortmans' legislative work. Some were dog owners who saw Gilbert's photo in the coverage and couldn't stop thinking about him. Some were people who had lost someone to violence and needed to do something that felt like an answer.

A portrait of Gilbert now hangs on the wall of the Helping Paws facility. The puppies trot underneath it on their way to enrichment activities. They don't know whose dog it was, or what the face on the wall meant to the people who put it there. They know the smell of the place, the rhythms of feeding time, the feel of the foam balls.

When the Guided by Gilbert litter went home, there was a lot of love and pride in the room. They have a lot to live up to, those puppies, and we were certain that we're going to watch them grow, and they're going to change lives. Melissa, Mark and Gilbert will continue to be proud of us.

— Alyssa Golob, executive director, Helping Paws

Griffin and Gertie are with their volunteer trainers now, in Minnesota homes where they'll spend the next two years learning what they are. They'll be walked every morning, socialized in shopping centers and libraries and busy parks, taught to hold still when the world gets loud. At the end of it, they'll be matched with someone who needs what they can offer.

Gilbert never got to do that work. But nine dogs with names beginning with G are doing it in his place, and if that's not exactly what grief looks like turned into something useful — it's close enough.