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.
On that, I do agree.
Writing about it was being honest, but throws up concerns with some people.
I’m not saying its “acceptable behavior”. I just think she could have tried a trainer or could have put the dog up for adoption......she’d have been far better off having it euthanized by a vet if she decided it had to be put down.
I can hear the objections about “that costs more” and “that’s not how its done out in the country - we just shoot it”....but she should have been smart enough to realize this would turn off a lot of voters. At the very least, you don’t put something like that in an autobiography. Whether anybody here likes it or not, the reality is a lot of voters will not like this at all.
PETA writes a hit article and “conservatives” take the bait.
True Trump supporters will, after some possible initial grousing, ultimately rationalize & support the choice. Many will see it as bold, courageous and a jab to those sensitive to these type of issues and/or concerns. IE the PETA types.
They may initially, but not for long.
The immediate problem I have with Kristi is her apparent inability to distinguish between aggressive potentially dangerous livestock and a joyful dog who just isn’t hunting material but would make for a wonderful companion animal to someone. One wonders whether Kristi would be adverse to taking some of us to the gravel pit. 😏
One hopes that Kristi has invested well, although one doesn’t really see her retiring early and opening up a rescue shelter for poorly socialized or miscreant dogs.
If that was your dog and you decided to give it away to another farm family, would you tell the potential owners that it had a history of killing chickens and tried to bite you? You would be doing them a disservice if you didn't.
That dog was easily triggered by something and it's a guarantee that it would triggered again. Maybe even by a child......
Stupid statement of the day.
“He doesn’t need to worry about a VP who will be looking to run in 2028 to replace him.”
Succeed him.
If Trump wins this year, he can’t run again in ‘28.
And Trump will want someone he picks to succeed him to protect his legacy and complete his projects.
Yep, got NO use for anyone that mistreats animals...she is a self described POS.
I assume “Jazz” is a city slicker who never lived in the country with livestock or dogs. As crappy as it is, sometimes animals need put down when they are dangerously aggressive.
(Yep, got NO use for anyone that mistreats animals...she is a self described POS)
Are you nuts? She did the dog a favor and put it out of its murdering misery.
How she could be so dumb to write about killing a puppy basically is beyond me.
—
A warning to the men in her life, if any.
The people complaining, are they types of people who say that you shouldn’t kill animals, because you can buy meat at the supermarket.
How so?
Hunting dogs don’t make good farm livestock dogs. They are notorious for killing chickens. You’d have to kill every hunting dog you had.
First there is a way to cure a dog of killing chickens. You hang the dead chicken around their neck and leave it attached flopping around for 5 days. The dog will never go near a chicken again.
I grew up around hunting and hunting dogs. They used to destroy dogs that wouldn’t hunt. It was fairly common. I didn’t hold with it then and I don’t hold with it now. If you do then that’s your opinion.
Who gives a damn if killed her dog for attacking the neighbor’s chickens other the animal rights freaks from PETA?
This matters because?
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