Posted on 04/27/2024 10:09:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I have been an admirer of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem ever since she first showed up on my radar after her election in 2019. She has established a solid record as a conservative with ambitious policy goals that have served her state very well and she's an excellent communicator. She's been well up on my list of potential Trump veepstakes picks because she brings a lot to the table. But all of that came crashing down for me yesterday evening when The Guardian published a review of her upcoming book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward." It sounds as if most of the book is a fairly typical political analysis of the dangers of rampant progressivism and the need to restore traditional American values. But it also contains one highly disturbing episode from her life when she killed one of her own dogs, a German wirehaired pointer named Cricket who was only 14 months old. Her description of the incident is rather horrifying and I fear it speaks poorly of her character. (Warning: Potentially disturbing content ahead.)
In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem describes attempting to train Cricket to hunt pheasant and the dog's failure to adapt to typical hunting procedures. Rather than locating game and "pointing" (hence the breed name) at birds so the hunter can take them, Cricket would "go out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”. It sounds as if Cricket wasn't well-suited to be a hunting dog, but was certainly very happy. Noem even described Cricket as "the picture of pure joy."
Despite all of that, she took the dog out to a gravel pit and shot her with a rifle. She later returned and did the same to a goat. She reports that the uncastrated goat was "nasty and mean." Having worked summer jobs on family farms growing up, I can assure you that uncastrated male goats kept for breeding are aggressive and territorial. It's just their nature.
In a way, I suppose I can understand why Noem would choose to share this story. She's trying to make the point that she is "willing to do anything, difficult, messy, and ugly if it simply needs to be done." That can be true at times in politics to be sure, but as a leader, character also counts for a lot. As I've written here before, my wife and I first met volunteering at an animal shelter. Dogs mean a lot to us and we've had many over the decades we've been together. If you have a dog that you're raising for hunting and it doesn't work out, you can find a new home for the dog, particularly when it is so young and "the picture of pure joy."
Even if you can't manage to find a new home yourself, you could take the dog to a shelter. If all else fails, you might feel you have no other choice, but you should euthanize the dog humanely. We've had to take too many of our dogs to be put to sleep but they were all suffering from extreme old age and/or painful, untreatable diseases. (We probably could have paid off our house five years earlier with all the money we've spent on veterinary bills.) If the Noem family was operating a farm, they obviously knew and had access to a veterinarian. It's a requirement for such an operation. You don't just drag the dog to a gravel pit and shoot it.
In the book, Noem writes, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.” The Guardian correctly describes that passage as possibly being "the greatest understatement of election year." I agree. I wish I hadn't learned this about her.
To be clear, this doesn't take away from Noem's commendable performance as the Governor of South Dakota. And if Donald Trump does wind up picking her to be his running mate, I won't hold it against him or fail to vote for him. (We vote for presidents, not vice presidents.) But if she were to move forward and run for national office on her own, I would be forced to find a third-party candidate to vote for. As I said above, character is also important in leaders. I could not, in good conscience, vote for Kristi Noem. That's how important this is to me.
Chicken Lives Matter.
How many eggs did Cricket produce?
Why? So she could be adopted by some loving family? And subsequently attack a child? Taking that dog to a shelter would only result in them killing it.
We were on a distant relative’s ranch and the dog herding the cattle was running funny with its leg dangling.
“Oh - your dog runs well on a hurt leg.”
“Yeah - she broke it years ago.”
“The vet couldn’t fix it?”
“We don’t have time for vets. He figured it out.”
I didn’t say anything, but that (for a city-folk like me) seemed pretty callous. And I would think he’d want to take care of his equipment (the dog) that he uses in his line of work.
He spent plenty of time BS-ing with every neighbor that drove by so he wasn’t all that short on time.
Although the dog did figure it out, so...
Calm down
It's a dog. If it was out of control and there's no way to tame the dog, then yes, it was time to take care of business.
But Kristi should have kept it to herself. Especially since she's a politican.
Trump will pick a non-political person to be his running mate. He doesn’t need to worry about a VP who will be looking to run in 2028 to replace him.
97% of Americans do not understand this.
Those 97% don't seem to understand that many of the animals who go to their deaths at the vet have a keen sense of smell, and may be able to make a rough guess as to what's coming.
Terror from the vet office smell, or bouncing around happy as a clam in a gravel pit?
My advice is to steer clear of owning animals in whackjob 2020s America.
“the reality of rural living”
They’re animals, no different then Hare, lamb, calf, etc.
This sob story Jazzy is telling pisses me off. Look at the facts she is omitting. Where in her story does she tell us that dog bit her? Killed Chickens?
Failure to report relevant info is deceptive. See tagline.
Where is the ER bill for her saving wounds?
Where are the scar?
Given this news should Trump pick her as his running mate?
When I was a kid, my brother and I would always have Zipper (our dog) with us where ever we would go. We had a chicken farm near our house and took Zipper with us to check out the chickens. My brother foolishly opened the gate to the 1000 chickens and Zipper raced in, killing chickens as fast as he could. With the gate open, Zipper chased half the chickens out. We had dead chickens and chickens all over the neighborhood.
When my dad found a chicken in our bathroom he suspected something was wrong with our neighbor’s chickens. He went over to the chicken farm and found a very angry farmer. If he could he would have shot our dog with his gun.
My dad went all over the neighborhood, collecting chickens and returning them to the farm. It took two days to get only 50 of the chickens back. He had to pay for the rest. If my brother hadn’t taken the blame for opening the gate, my dad would have shot Zipper. That is how things happen in very rural areas.
Where is the ER bill for her savage wounds?
Where are the scars?
Given this news should Trump pick her as his running mate?
Jazz is sounds like a beta cuck.
I grew up on a farm. SOmetimes you have to kill dogs, and animals. It’s the way it is. Is it hard sometimes? Yep.
You have to read the Guardian article for the details of how the dog killed several of the neighbors chickens and then turned on Noem. Important details that Jazz Shaw curiously leaves outs of his article.
Regardless of how much sense can be made of her killing a dog, it won't fly with the vast majority of dog owners.
We supposedly need some soccer moms to vote for Trump. Soccer moms are not going to vote for a dog-killer.
Why yes. Yes you do. A farmer or rancher does the dirty deed himself. Or herself. What's the alternative? Take the dangerous dog to a vet and let him kill it? Or take it to a shelter and let some poor unsuspecting family adopt it and let them get bit or mauled?
Vance and Rubio have moved into the top 5 in the betting.
Scott is still favorite, Noem, Stefanik, Vance, Rubio.
Someone at Hotair doesn’t want her to be VP is my conclusion.
I guess calling GOP women the next Hitler doesn’t make sense-hmmm what else do we have? Puppy killer! Yea that’s the ticket!
Good luck with that. They hate Trump.
She doesn’t owe you showing her ER bill. She doesn’t owe you the opportunity to show her scars.
She doesn’t owe you a damn thing.
What she does owe is restitution to the owners of the chickens Cricket “murdered”. And if you must know - she paid that.
Please. Try not to get emotional and weepy over this sob story. Which is basically a lie.
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