Pittsburgh Police and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Mounted Patrol are mourning the loss of the department\u2019s horse, Spirit.<\/p>\n
The department posted to social media that Spirit died following an inoperable bone fracture.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpirit was our gentle giant,\u201d said Officer Jamie Bush, who coordinates the Mounted Unit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was always calm, always patient, just good at his job all around.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re heartbroken, but we know his life was full of as much joy as he brought to our friends and neighbors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spirit was 14 years old.<\/p>\n
He joined the department in 2017 as the second horse in the department\u2019s then-newly relaunched Mounted Unit.<\/p>\n
The 1,500-pound horse was donated by former Pittsburgh Steeler Stephon Tuitt.<\/p>\n
The social media post described Spirit as \u201ca people person horse\u201d from the day he arrived on the job.<\/p>\n
Spirit enjoyed school visits, parades, and events, and worked to build relationships between police and the communities they serve.<\/p>\n
The Mounted Unit also posted to Facebook, saying it was an \u201cincredibly difficult decision to lay Spirit to rest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSpirit was a kind, gentle soul who was truly built to be a police horse,\u201d the post said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpirit served the City of Pittsburgh with honor, courage, and a heart as steady as they come. He passed surrounded by his fellow officers and those who loved him most.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pittsburgh Police and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police Mounted Patrol are mourning the loss of the department\u2019s horse,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[73,75,74],"class_list":["post-245406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}