‘You can recover from a lot of things in politics, but not from killing a dog’
Donald Trump’s rumoured running mate has defended shooting her “untrainable” dog dead after she described killing the family pet in her memoir.
Kristi Noem, 52, the governor of South Dakota, said she “hated” her 14-month old wirehaired pointer, Cricket, who was “aggressive”.
She was unable to train the animal, Ms Noem said, who was “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
Noem described how she decided the dog had to be put down after it killed a local family’s chickens and then “whipped round to bite me” when she tried to control it.
In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, the Republican politician said she then took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot it.
“It was not a pleasant job. But it had to be done,” Noem wrote, according to an excerpt obtained by The Guardian.
She then realised “another unpleasant job needed to be done” and proceeded to shoot the family’s “nasty and mean” goat in the same manner.
The goat, however, needed to be shot twice.
When the school bus dropped her daughter off shortly after, she asked: “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
“I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Noem said.
Her story sparked an online backlash from her political opponents and dog lovers.
The Democrats, including President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, seized on the opportunity to make political capital.
The Democratic National Committee issued a statement on behalf of “the dogs of the DNC, aka the Dogmocratic Party.”
“As DNC’s canine companions, we’ve heard a lot from our owners about just how extreme and dangerous Donald Trump and his far-right MAGA allies are - but nothing could prepare us for the truly disturbing and horrifying passages Kristi L. Noem willingly chose to put in her new book,” the statement said.
Meghan McCain, the daughter of John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said: “You can recover from a lot of things in politics, change the narrative etc – but not from killing a dog.”
Ryan Busse, the Democratic candidate for governor of Montana, said: “Anyone who has ever owned a bird-dog knows how disgusting, lazy and evil this is. Damn.”
Noem defended herself in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying: “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm.”
She promised more “real, honest, and politically incorrect stories” in her upcoming book. Telegraph, Washington Post