However, the Left would will rail against this typically have no real problem with the murder of children in the womb, almost always for reasons of "convenience," but which sometimes may be due to undesirable aspects.
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.
If you live on a farm or ranch, a dog like that is a threat to all the fowl, cattle and horses.
I had a co-worker who was promoted and transferred to our plant in Kentucky. He and his wife purchased a house and land out in the country.
His nearest neighbor had some cattle and one day my friend's two huskies ran off and ultimately attacked and killed one of the neighbor's cows.
Friend had no choice, he had to put the dogs down.
bttt
This is whacked. Reminds me of Palin and the chickens. Any farm person knows a dangerous dog needs to be put down. A dog is not a human . In Asia they eat them!
She did the right thing and it's unfortunate many folks here don't understand the reality of farm or ranch life.
I still find it incredible that FREEPERS believe that farmers eat dogs. You are at least the second person that mentioned nobody should care about killing a dog, because they are killing it to eat it. Stunning amount of ignorance.
Actually, all she had to do was shut her big mouth about it. Her book could have been incredible. But she had to be intriguing or something.
No kill shelters might accept aggressive dogs but they will not accept dogs with a history of biting.
Sorry for that. I’d suspect that if you were writing a book trying to explain why you should be VP like Noem did, you would keep that story to yourself.
JD Vance or Kari Lake should be Trump”s choices.
Much ado about nothing is more accurate. Putting a nuisance dog or any animal down is common especially around farms etc.
100% correct... You get rid of nuisance animals.
ping!
Clinton knew about dogs that don’t hunt.
Sick. Shot a puppy and brags about it? We had a dog we adopted, a stray mix of German shepherd and husky, a beautiful dog, looked like a wolf. We had the dog before we had kids, and at first “bones” was ok with them. Then started snapping at them when they would try to ride him, and basically bother him. He tolerated them at first, then became jealous We think. One day he bit me on the back of my leg when I was swatting a fly, I guess he thought I was trying to hit my wife, which I would never do. I was shocked that bones would bite me, and was furious. I chained him up and was going to shoot him, but I just could not do it. I loved him despite being bitten and realized he was trying to protect my wife. But we couldn’t risk having him around the kids, so we gave him to a friend who was familiar with bones and vice-versa. He was ok with it and I visited him many times, always ashamed at myself for wanting to shoot him.
However, the Left would will rail against this typically have no real problem with the murder of children in the womb, almost always for reasons of "convenience," but which sometimes may be due to undesirable aspects.
She’s Deep State.
It doesn’t hire the front office appearance types for brains.
Agreed.
I have no problem with her shooting the dog.
But it’s poor judgement for a politician to willingly make it public.
There is no benefit to doing that.
He shouldn't. She's a moderately successful governor of a mostly red state with a minuscule population. She has no experience with national politics AFAIK. She would be Sarah Palin v. 2.0.
I say that as a South Dakota native, and I would also consider myself a Kristi Noem fan. But being governor of South Dakota, good-looking, and female aren't sufficient qualifications to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.
I would say that yes, that indeed is a significant omission, though it means her own "border control" failed (easy mistake to make).
However, much of the Left has no real objection to a beast that attacks Israel and attacks Jews.
I had a golden retriever. He was a pet and part of my family. Loved and cared for by us and lived a happy life until he passed away at 14. If he was instead a working dog, let’s say trained to retrieve ducks, and he couldn’t do it, I have no use for the dog. I’m nowhere near an animal shelter and I don’t want a pet so what are my options? The dog has to be fed and walked every day. The dog needs vet visits, shots and other care which I am unwilling to do.
If I am on a working farm, unfortunately I am putting the dog down. Fact of life on a farm.
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