The Guardian reported that South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (right) admitted in an upcoming book that she shot and killed the family’s 14-month-old hound Cricket and a goat.
“No Looking Back: The Truth About Politics and How We Can Move America Forward” paints a stark picture of the difficult choices Noem faced in her personal and political lives.
Governor Noem’s book describes a disturbing incident in which Cricket, a wire-haired pointer, displayed uncontrollable behavior during a hunting trip, causing the dog to attack chickens and attempt to bite Noem.
Excerpt from the Guardian report:
By taking Cricket with her older dog on a pheasant hunt, Norm said she hopes to calm the puppy down and start teaching her how to behave. Unfortunately, crickets ruined the hunt and she “went crazy with excitement, chasing all these birds and having the time of her life.”
Norm described calling Cricket and then using an electronic collar to try to control her. Nothing works.Then, on the way home from the hunt, when Norm stopped to talk to a local family, the crickets escaped Norm’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “catching[ing] One chicken at a time, kill it with one bite, then throw it away to attack another one.”
Noam wrote that Cricket was an untrainable dog that behaved like “a trained assassin.”
When Norm finally caught the cricket, the dog “swiveled around and bit me,” she said. Then, as the chicken’s owner cried, Norm apologized repeatedly, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they were asking and to help them dispose of the bodies scattered around the crime scene.”
Noam said that throughout, cricket was “a picture of pure joy”.
“I hate that dog,” Noem wrote, adding that Cricket had proven herself “untrainable” and “a danger to anyone she came in contact with” and that “as a hunting dog, she It’s not worthless.”
“At that moment,” Norm said, “I realized I had to let her go.”
[…]
Norm decides to kill the nameless goat just as she killed the dog Cricket. But despite her “drag[ing]him into a gravel pit,” the goat survived by jumping when she fired. Norm said she went back to the truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and dropped him off.”
On Friday morning, Noem responded to the Guardian report, “We love animals, but hard decisions like this happen all the time on farms. Sadly, a few weeks ago we had to put three horses away. At home, they’ve been in our home for 25 years. If you want more real, honest, politically incorrect stories that will wow the media, pre-order No Turning Back.
The governor again defended his actions on Fox News with Sean Hannity, emphasizing the need to make tough decisions on the farm.
“You know how fake news works,” Noem told Hannity.
“They left out some or most of the facts of the story. They interpreted the worst and that’s what happened in this case. I hope people actually buy this book and learn the truth of this story because the truth of this story Yes, this is a working dog, not a puppy.
“This is an extremely dangerous dog. One of our families found her behavior to be too aggressive. We were her second chance and the day she was euthanized was the day she slaughtered our neighbor’s livestock. She attacked me. This is a difficult decision.
“It’s in this book because it’s full of hard, challenging decisions that I’ve had to make in my life. What I hope people take away from it is that the point of this story is that most politicians run from the truth. . They shy away from making hard decisions and I don’t do either of those things, I make hard decisions,” Noem said.
watch:
Do not believe #False news The twisting spin of media. I had to choose between the safety of my children and an animal with a history of attacking humans and killing livestock.
I chose my children. pic.twitter.com/ZTtN7MpQvf
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) May 2, 2024
Much of the public reaction was critical of Noem’s actions.
Every time you talk about it I get angrier. Stop pretending this puppy deserves to be killed. I rescue abused, starved, and abandoned dogs that are 100 times harder to deal with. pic.twitter.com/eVYhYIipgT
— Catturd™ (@catturd2) May 3, 2024
You can’t blame the media [checks notes] Read what you have written.
You killed a puppy, then bragged about killing a puppy because you thought you could score political points with puppy killers, and now things have gotten so bad you’re trying to hide behind your kids.
— Elie Misttal (@ElieNYC) May 2, 2024
Oh wait, you’ve completely locked yourself in again – great, so you’re saying cricket has a history? Then you must have failed to fulfill your obligations beforehand. When you have an aggressive pet that is “in training,” it is your responsibility to control that dog. you failed.
— Wren (@wrens_dens) May 2, 2024
