Trump VP contender Kristi Noem writes of killing dog - and goat - in new book | Books | The Guardian
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South Dakota governor includes bloody tale in campaign volume - and admits 'a better politician … wouldn't tell the story here'
In 1952, as a Republican candidate for vice-president, Richard Nixon famously stirred criticism by admitting receiving a dog, Checkers, as a political gift.
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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's book - No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward - will be published in the US next month. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Like other aspirants to be Trump's second vice-president who have ventured into print, Noem offers readers a mixture of autobiography, policy prescriptions and political invective aimed at Democrats and other enemies, all of it raw material for speeches on the campaign stump.
She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything "difficult, messy and ugly" if it simply needs to be done.
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.
"Kennedy looked around confused," Noem writes of her daughter, who asked: "Hey, where's Cricket?"
In what may prove a contender for the greatest understatement of election year, Noem adds: "I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn't tell the story here."
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Poor Cricket, chirps no more. Maybe someone should have 'goated' her into putting them up for adoption. This way they wouldn't have to come home from school and ask where their damn dog was, no ?
"She includes her story about the ill-fated Cricket, she says, to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life, to do anything "difficult, messy and ugly" if it simply needs to be done."
Soundss perfect for the Donald, especially when he has to have her strung up at the end for no rePenceing, as she accepts that politics is sometimes "difficult, messy, and ugly".
Cricket? We won't be seeing Cricket again. Cricket went bye-bye...
Poor Cricket!
Evening... stupid woman!!..
It is a well known fact a dogs behaviour reflects the owners...
And she is in politics!!
Enough said...wonder if cricket had rabies?? Now there's a thought...
Gotta love US politics..🐨
no, no i don't gotta, but get what your saying from a 3rd party perspective, but, believe you get what i'm sayin, having to deal firsthand with so much ignorance...
This is what leftists have their fucking undies in a twist over?
Have news for you- if your dog attacks people, another dog, or another person's pets or live stock it needs to be put the fuck down! This dog killed two chickens and tried to literally bite the hand that fed it. Maybe she should have let it live so it could freely attack other people like Brandon's dog?
If the Secret Service agents had any damn backbones; and didn't fear for their jobs; they would sue Brandon and force his mutt to be put down.
As for the goat.
Better never go to a beef farm, or pig farm, or any farm that breeds and stocks animals for consumption. Any animal that is sick, deformed, or uncontrollable gets put down as well.
I look forward to all leftists becoming vegetarians.
Noem isn't a leftist.
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It's important to start training a dog when they are a puppy. The poor dog might have been in heat, too.
I'm not going to say more because I don't hunt and have never owned a hunting dog
what kind of person hates a dog?
if there was some reason to put the dog down, fine. dont go bragging about it in a book.
like i said, she seems like true trump v.p. material
There was a reason. The dog attacked and killed her neighbors chickens plus it tried to bite her.
If she had carried an assault rifle, she wouldn’t have had to return to the truck to kill the goat.
yea, and who has that kind of time to waste when a bully billy needs wasted after bullying your silly sally off spring with the on fall of the bring your child to an execution week, cause children are never too young to be exposed to the realities needed to comprehend the rigors and mental stability required in todays world of politix me off, how soft the underbelly of todays kids have softened, as they are protected to the point they're not prepared to take on the rigorous challenges the 'real' world has them facing these daze...