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South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has been on the GOP short list to be Donald Trump’s Vice President pick in the 2024 Presidential Race. Fortunately, Noem has outed herself as a killer of dogs, goats and her own career in her latest book, “No Going Back”, to be published on May 7, 2024. This is her second book in less than two years. Her first book, “Not My First Rodeo”, was published in June, 2022. The idea that this woman could get any further in politics is anathema to me. Spare me the “you have never lived on a farm or ranch” lectures. I watched my great-grandmother, Big Mom, snapped a chicken’s neck on the back porch. I know what farm animals are for. And, just so you know, “Old Yeller” was shot because he was injured and could have had rabies, not because Travis “hated” him. Go whistle up a rope.
Most, if not all, of the Victory Girls have had a soft spot for Kristi Noem since she hosted President Trump for the Fourth of July Fireworks at Mount Rushmore in 2020. She’s a little lightweight, but she seems Conservative but young. NOW, we know that Noem is a spree killer. In one day, she took a family pet dog AND a goat to the gravel pit and shot them both.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another”.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like “a trained assassin”.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”. Then, as the chickens’ owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime”.
Through it all, Noem says, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy”.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
Incredibly, Noem’s tale of slaughter is not finished.
Her family, she writes, also owned a male goat that was “nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem decided to kill the unnamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket the dog. But though she “dragged him to a gravel pit”, the goat jumped as she shot and therefore survived the wound. Noem says she went back to her truck, retrieved another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down”.
At that point, Noem writes, she realised a construction crew had watched her kill both animals. The startled workers swiftly got back to work, she writes, only for a school bus to arrive and drop off Noem’s children.
Kristi Noem is a serial killer. Her bloodlust wasn’t sated by shooting the dog. The dog that she hadn’t trained properly, the dog she hadn’t restrained properly in the car and that allowed it to get a neighbor’s chickens. Kristi’s blood was still up so she ran and got the goat to kill. Kristi HATED poor Cricket the dog and wasn’t too fond of the goat either. Her rage was up and creatures must die. Kristi doesn’t understand why we don’t get it:
I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book — No Going Back. The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons…
— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) April 28, 2024
The South Dakota law saws nothing about bad owners. I would like to know how the workers in the gravel pit felt? Morning Joe tries to blame this on Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd. Oh, hale no, dude.
No, no, no. This was an editorial decision made by Kristi. She told the story to her ghostwriter. She made the decision to leave it in. Noem thought she would look like a bada$$ edge lord. Instead, she looks like an unhinged spree killer.
Shes a bad rancher
She’s a bad dog trainer
She’s a bad governor
She has a poor conservative score
End her career like she ended Cricket’s life https://t.co/Nk9XLNeWES— Reese (@reeseonable) April 27, 2024
Get lost, Kristi.
Featured Image: Gage Skidmore/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons
GWB says: Spare me the “you have never lived on a farm or ranch” lectures. I watched my great-grandmother, Big Mom, snapped a chicken’s neck on the back porch. I know what farm animals are for. And, just so you know, “Old Yeller” was shot because he was injured and could have had rabies, not because Travis “hated” him. Go whistle up a rope.
Snapping a chicken’s neck is NOT the same as having to put down a working dog. You’ve taken to the Progressive concept of “hate” which is merely an emotional something held against someone else. She hated that dog because it made her put it down. She saw the dog as not just useless but a DANGER. No dog should ever try to bite a human without direct cause – such as hurting the dog, or a trained guard dog doing what it is ordered to do.
This was a young dog, but it should have been beyond the puppy stage. It should have been trained properly. Instead, it didn’t hold until loosed when hunting, and it attacked a flock of chickens without command or provocation. Both of those things are problematic. When it failed at those things it became useless. And when it tried to bite her it became dangerous.
BTW, the reason the sheriff had to take Toto in the beginning of “Wizard of Oz” is because the old witch was in the right. As nasty of a human being as she was, the dog attacking her chickens made the dog a menace and it needed to be put down (since it obviously couldn’t be re-trained). That’s the conservative answer.
Noem was absolutely right to put down the dog. I would have put it down, too, in her situation. (I almost did put down a dog once. But it turned out to just be extremely dumb, and not a danger to anyone or their property.) And, once it tried to bite her, there was no “Well, you should have put it up for adoption,” either. Some unsuspecting family, thinking their getting a cuddly pet, suddenly has huge doctor bills because Old Yeller bit little Timmy….
And the only reason it was dumb to put it in her book is because a vast number of Americans have adopted the attitude that all domesticated animals are pets to be coddled and cuddled and never to receive consequences (except maybe rubbing their nose in an accident in the house) – just as their children didn’t. They are soft men, leading us to hard times.
Bob says: Sure asshole. Guess you can’t train a dog either. GFY
GWB says: The dog that she hadn’t trained properly, the dog she hadn’t restrained properly in the car and that allowed it to get a neighbor’s chickens.
Wow, you really don’t have a handle on this, do you? What an asinine statement. Dogs are not robots to be programmed if you simply follow the proper protocols. They are animals and some of them will NOT be trained properly. And if you think it’s her fault the dog didn’t take to the training, then I will ask, what about all the other dogs she was hunting with? Who trained them? They took to the training. None of them got out of the vehicle and attacked the chickens.
If you have more information than presented here, then you should put it out. Because your argument so far shows a distinct lack of understanding of working dogs. The urbanized/suburbanized view of animals as all Disney critters is part of the problem with our current society.
I would like to know how the workers in the gravel pit felt?
Really? Why? Why do their feelings matter one whit? It’s not their dog. Even if it was, I wouldn’t care for their feelings if I had to put it down because it had attacked me unprovoked.
Noem thought she would look like a bada$$ edge lord.
No. She thought it would make her look like someone who actually knows how the world of ranching and hunting works, when there are animals involved.
Sorry, Toni, but your emotionally overwrought anger against Noem in this case is nothing but that – emotion, based on no actual knowledge of the use of dogs as a tool on the farm or ranch.
Noem already wasn’t going to be a nominee (for other reasons). But trying to kill any nomination of her over this just proves that y’all are bypassing a huge chunk out of the middle of America.
Que says: Not going to preach like the long-winded pontificator above, but merely observe that Noem has little self-awareness in PR. Apparently she never heard the adage, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.”
NTSOG says: “Instead, it didn’t hold until loosed when hunting, and it attacked a flock of chickens without command or provocation.”
Where I live farmers have absolute right to shoot predators that get in amongst their farmed animals. The predators whether cats or dogs may be shot for just being in the field in which the animals are kept. This comes as surprise to city folks moving to rural areas who want to turn Rover loose for a bit of exercise in the country or let their cats roam at night. The local ranger is always happy when farmers shoot such animals as it saves him the bother.
In New Zealand recently Police shot a mature ram in a field after discovering two elderly people had been killed by the ram on their small farm. The ram made the mistake of charging the Police. Cute pet lambs quickly learn to head-butt people, but when they’re mature it’s another story. They become dangerous.
Blackwing1 says: Any dog that acts like a weasel in a chicken coop is going DOWN. Any dog that runs wildlife is going to be SHOT.
That’s not “whistling up a rope”, that’s just a harsh reality.
Any dog that attacks people more than once is going to be put down. That’s not even just the way to get rid of biting dogs, in most areas it’s the LAW.
I’m far more interested in what this says about you, Toni Williams, than it does about Noem. Your little anecdote about your g-grandma has nothing to do with the harsh realities of living in a state like South Dakota. A working dog is NOT a pet, and if it attacks farm animals or people you simply cannot afford to have it in existence, exactly like wringing the neck of a surplus rooster. Me, I’d not have wasted the goat but used it for stew; you don’t waste even bad meat…turn it into dog food, if nothing else.
I watched my 75-pound hunting dog have both of his ears grabbed by a toddler laying on the floor, who used them to pull himself to his feet. My dog whined a little, but waited until my nephew was standing and had let go of his ears, and then gave him a lick in the face. THAT’S what you want a working animal to do around people. No other reaction is acceptable.
I hope you have the internal courage to admit that in this case you are simply, flat, wrong. Of course, you can always take the collectivist’s way out and hit us with a ban-hammer since we disagree with you.
Toni Williams says: I don’t ban people for disagreeing with me. Nowadays there are other options than offing the dog. This isn’t 1880.
GWB says: Nowadays there are other options than offing the dog.
NO. You’re wrong. Once an animal has attacked people there is NO further option than putting the animal down. PERIOD.
You don’t think folks like the rioters at Columbia should be tolerated, right? Why would you tolerate an animal doing it, knowing it can’t be reasoned with?
Joe R. says: Noem’s winning because she has the rest of ufux whining.
What a wet pant load from all of you.
John Shepherd says: Dope, she lost because 90% of dog owners hate her.
A reader says: What the blowhards above seem to be missing is that Cricket was a high energy sporting breed. According to the National German Wirehaired Pointer Rescue on their Facebook page: “Sporting breeds are bred with bird/hunting instincts but it takes training and effort to have a working field dog.”
In this article, Joan Payton, of the German Wirehaired Pointer Club of America is quoted as saying: “‘That was a puppy that had no experience, obviously no training,’ she said. ‘If you know a minuscule amount about a bird dog, you don’t take a 14 month old out with trained adult dogs and expect them to perform. That’s not how it works.’” The club “said puppies learn best by hunting one-to-one with their owners, not with other dogs.” (Source: https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/politicians-dog-experts-vilify-south-dakota-governor-after-109766784)
Various actual ranchers and farmers on Threads and X have all stated that what Noem did was unconscionable. It’s the sign of a bad trainer NOT a bad dog.
But I suppose all the people/men defending her here are either blinded by her looks or her cruelty.
Also, “Animal humane societies say that while some dogs are not good at hunting, 14 months is too young to determine that a dog can’t hunt. They also say that there are better ways than euthanasia to deal with a dog that exhibits aggressive behavior. The best option would be to call a local animal shelter.” (https://www.yahoo.com/news/was-it-legal-for-kristi-noem-to-shoot-her-puppy–and-what-other-options-did-she-have-183343489.html)
So yeah, she had better more humane options and only a psychopath or arrogant blowhard would defend her. I rarely agree with Toni, but here she shows that she is neither. Thank God for that!
GWB says: So, you ignorant blowhard, you entirely missed the part about it killing the chickens and turning to bite its master. THOSE things are what gave her no other options.
If you can’t look at the entire story, then stop yourself before you comment, and say “Golly, maybe I’m too ignorant to say anything here.” And that goes for all of those “hunting dog experts” you cite above.
John Shepherd says: Over at instapundit, GWB said he is not a hunter nor does he own hunting dogs so ignore him. He doesn’t know what he is talking about. I am a coonhound guy so I do.
Noem’s defenders want to ignore everything about this incident except the final result because it does not reflect well on her judgement, ability as a trainer or her humanity. I have met [rac]coon hunters with the same attitude and I won’t hunt with them.
Let’s talk abouts the politics. Today was dog day at Guarenteed Raye Field in Chicago. There were 1200 dogs at the game. They represent a vast majority of dog owners and they don’t care about the rural culture. They are going to hate Noem. Then there are hunting dog owners like me who understand that dogs that go after livestock get put down out of necessity but also understand that Noem set this in motion with a series of bad decisions that led to this outcome. We think she is an irresponsible dog owner. I got a Plott hound as companion for my hunter that was a failed hunting dog. The breeder/trainer gave him up to rescue group and he was a very good companion for my other dog and the family. That is what responsible people do. Anybody who knows hunting dogs can figure out by the time they are 14 months whether the dog has the instincts to succeed. Noem should have known Cricket was not a hunter and either kept her as a house dog or given her to a rescue group. I would never send my Plott out with the pack knowing his limitations because, unlike a pheasant, raccoons are vicious and I would not want my dog mauled.
Que says: Thank you for posting this.
Toni Williams says: Thank you. It bothered me that Noem would think that Cricket would watch the older dogs and learn from them. Then, not securing Cricket in the truck when she went to the chicken coop.
Que says: Toni, agreed. Another incident which the Noem fanboys (I’m assuming they’re male) are conflating is the “biting” incident you posted in your article:
“When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog “whipped around to bite me”.“
That’s because THE DOG WAS STARTLED. I’m surprised that Noem wouldn’t know this — or perhaps she’s spinning this to make Cricket appear to be a vicious biter who just had to be shot.
We had a corgi that bit our oldest child after she tried to pull the dog away from our backyard fence. A strange dog had entered the neighbor’s yard and our dog charged the fence, barking and snarling to defend her territory. Our daughter grabbed her collar and received a snap on the wrist, Dogs will instinctively bite if they believe they are being attacked. That does not mean they are vicious or deserve to be put down.
Our corgi had never bit anyone before or after that incident in her 15+ years of life.
Well. This is an interesting thread, for sure and certain.
I find myself in the odd situation of agreeing with John Shepard!
I noted when first reading this that the only information we have here is Noem’s own WRITTEN testimony, presumably reviewed and verified by HER. No chance of a verbal gaffe, therefore it must be what she actually was thinking.
She says that she “hated that dog.” NOT that she hated putting it down, that she put it down because she hated it.
The same with the billy goat – she put it down because she HATED it. With the accompanying fact that she expected it to NOT behave, or smell, like a billy goat. Like every billy goat the world over. (Or ram, or rooster, or stallion…) Says to me that she is NOT a farm/ranch person in reality.
The motivation for both of these killings, per her OWN words, was personal pique. The animals weren’t behaving the way she wanted them to (one being intrinsically impossible) – and they caused her EMBARRASSMENT.
GWB says: I will accept that angle on the issue. You’re specifically rejecting the idea that she hated it because it was going to force her to put it down. I don’t agree, but it’s a very valid point.
As to the expecting the goat not to behave like a goat….
I don’t think the behavior exhibited was the normal level of aggressiveness. But I don’t know that.
GWB says: OK, so now I can link you with that account over there. Now I understand your posts over here better. It doesn’t make them any better, it just explains them.
The fact is this:
The dog attacked chickens, without provocation. That’s a behavior that makes the dog unsueable as a bird dog AND means the dog should be put down because it’s attacking livestock.
AND the dog attacked its master. That is enough to put a dog down immediately. I’ve raised numerous dogs, and NONE of them would have been allowed to survive if they attacked me. Period.
If it weren’t for all the bloviating about how awful a human being she must be for killing her dog over it running around on a hunt, I probably wouldn’t even have commented. But that is absolutely the most idiotic position to take on this issue, because it’s not the facts in evidence.
(BTW, if the dog had chased the chickens, that might have been acceptable doggie behavior, and possibly still trainable. But simply killing them, and not settling down to eat? No, that dog needs to be put down, right now.)
Scott says: John,
Not really the topic of this thread, but since you said you have a Plott hound. figured I’d ask. Does yours bark all night? We just rescued one, and he’s quiet all day, but barks all night. That and he constantly escapes from a 4 ft fence. if you’ve had similar experiences, would you mind sharing how you dealt with them?
Thanks
Que says: “If it weren’t for all the bloviating about how awful a human being she must be for killing her dog over it running around on a hunt …”
So says the most self-righteous, long-winded bloviator at this thread.
Cameron says: Obama ate dogs and the media still orgasms whenever he’s in their line of sight.
When reading, I read into the words what is actually IN the words. (Depending on circumstances, I am somewhat more ready to “interpret” verbal utterances – such as somebody saying they’ve visited all 57 States when they have been through yet another day of a grueling political campaign.)
Oh, and I can tell that you have not spent very much time, if any, around male farm animals that have not been bred and trained for millennia to mostly get along with humans.
Bettyt says: I think most of the people attacking Christi ought to go to Amazon and buy some courage and guts. Clearly they have never dealt with working dogs, especially not bad ones. So when a dog attacks various chickens and then attacks its master, which it has been trained not to do, you’d better put that little bastard down before it attacks your little boy or daughter for the fun of it. Now take your Maltese doggie out to hunt and leave us all alone and tell your friends what a mad dog killer Christie is. And how unacceptable such behavior is in the Hamptons.
Once again, by her own WRITTEN testimony, Noem has NO IDEA of how to train a working dog. In fact, her account could be used in a textbook for how NOT to train one.
No, it was NOT trained to refrain from attacking prey. Nor was it trained to obey its master. That much is quite OBVIOUS. I don’t know how many times I heard my father, a small town veterinarian in a rural area, and born and raised in rural Kansas, say that he had to put a “bad” dog down – and wished that he could have done a second shot for the OWNER.
There ARE bad dogs, that even proper training won’t change. There are also bad OWNERS, that should not be allowed anywhere near to any dog. Noem is one of those owners. AGAIN, BY HER OWN WRITTEN TESTIMONY.
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