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.
Savage looking lol
Yep. Noem capped her national political aspirations like Old Yeller.
Correct. The people who are flipping out about this also don't understand that in rural South Dakota, you don't have your pick of animal shelters or vets to take the dog to. This isn't NYC we're talking about.
Are you going to waste a whole workday to drive 100 mi or more roundtrip to take the dog to the vet, just so the vet can kill it with a shot of pentobarbital, instead of you doing it with a shot of lead? Between the fuel, the lost time and the vet bill, we're talking way more than $500 here.
Do y'all think a farmer puts a sick cow that isn't going to make it in a truck and hauls it to the vet so the vet can euthanize it? Why is a dog different? Because you don't own a cow? Don't be silly.
Study up sometime on the chicken industry, and what they do with the 50% of chicks that are born male. Intact males of any species are hard to raise -- they fight viciously with each other -- and not as good to eat, and castrating a male chicken is a non-trivial surgical procedure. Hint: they don't take the male chicks to the vet to euthanize them. You won't view your chicken sandwich the same way again.
Too bad Trump or his team didn’t say anything about that when it was being pushed on the nation.
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Trump’s not a physician, so like most everyone else when dealing with health issues he relies on physicians for advice regarding health issues. CHEAP SHOTS ARE SO OBVIOUS!
We lived on a ranch and had some chickens. Our Collie/German Shepard mix found out eggs were delicious and ate them joyfully right from under the laying hens. So my Dad got some very spicy hot pepper sauce and injected it into a bunch of eggs in the nests.
Cured Mickie from his keen taste for eggs. If he had had to put Mickie down, his 5 children would have had broken hearts.
You’re highly sensitive aren’t you?
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Stupidity is very often linked to sensitivity, so no surprise there.
murdered? she killed a dog.
what’s next, demanding an autopsy?
Many years ago, we adopted a small dog from a no-kill shelter and we signed that if we had problems we would return him.
He bit my husband, snarled and growled at every male, almost bit my brother in law and went after my 4 year old nephew and I caught him just in time. I took him back to that shelter with a letter saying this dog bites and would especially be dangerous around small children. We told them verbally too.
We got a call a few months later asking if the bit anyone and that he had attacked several family members and a a child in his new family. I told them we made this clear and re-sent the original letter. He was euthanized after that I believe. It would have been better if we had taken care of things ourselves 🤷♀️
Anyway, I have had many inside dogs and livestock guardians and all are amazing and gentle. I likely wouldn’t have to have to shoot any dog attacking my chickens or goats because the pyrs would take care of them in short order, but I would shoot if I had to.
This dog didn't have a history of biting. It spun around as if to bite once.
Once a dog gets the bloodlust there’s not much you can do about it. Same with raiding chicken nests for eggs.
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I had a relative whose dog would often bite her, but she was too stupid to get it put down. Oh, and it also bit others as well. Noem did the right thing, but revealing that incident makes me question her unthinking public revelation of it.
I’ve read the replies. I just disagree with you. This will be very damaging to her with voters whether you think it justified or not.
I would like her even more if she made slippers from cricket’s pelt.
She took swift care of a problem and didnt throw money away on " rehabilitation" for the dangerous dog..I hope she is as level headed about crime.
Lot’s of knee-jerk.....jerks reacting here....
Unless the story is untrue you are a heartless person. Do the right thing? It wasn’t a rabid animal. And the “working dog” angle is bullshit. You’re going to cling to the notion the lady’s livelihood was dependent on bird hunting? Ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself.
They seem to hate themselves to the point where they foul their own bodies in all manner of disgusting ways.
They treat their children, IF they decide to let them live, like pets. Their young minds become so screwed up that they spend their whole lives full of hate, drugs and discontent. Just like their parents..
Whenever faced with the problems of real live they always seek someone else to solve them..
I hear ya but there is no such thing. Admiral Stockdale is the closest we’ll ever cone to that and you know how that turned out.
Self esteem enhanced by expression of extreme conservative purity is destructive to all conservatism.
Kristi offers a few opportunities for expression of negative conservative purity. She is thus cast into the receptable of not good enough candidates.
Plus, she is a woman.
Ridiculous. This writer has too much time on his hands and thinks his opinion matters.
Well said, and I might add that a properly placed bullet is just as humane for putting down an animal as drugs and probably more so.
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