Published
April 28, 2024, 4:22 p.m. ET
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem defended her “hard and painful” resolution to shoot her 14-month-old looking canine, Cricket, following a rising tide of criticism after she made the eyebrow-raising revelations in her upcoming guide.
“I can understand why some people are upset about a 20 year old story of Cricket, one of the many working dogs at our ranch,” Noem mentioned in a Facebook submit Sunday afternoon.
“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did.”
The 52-year-old Republican — believed to be a contender to be former President Donald Trump’s operating mate — ignited a firestorm when The Guardian revealed excerpts from an advance copy of her memoir No Going Back.
In it, the governor writes about capturing useless a “less than worthless” wirehair pointer puppy that she mentioned she “hated,” punctuating the story with the heartbreaking element that her daughter, Kennedy, “looked around confused” when she got here home from college that day, asking, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Noem claimed in her guide that Cricket had an “aggressive personality” and was “untrainable,” apparently failing to study to hunt from different dogs and as an alternative attacking chickens on the farm like a “trained assassin.”
The guide additionally incorporates an anecdote detailing a time Noem killed a “nasty and mean” male goat, which she described as “disgusting” and “rancid.”
Noem doubled-down in response to the controversy in an X post on Saturday.
“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years,” she wrote, together with a plug for her guide on the finish.
The submit was savaged on-line, and flooded with detrimental feedback from outraged canine lovers.
“You are actual garbage,” one consumer wrote.
“‘I kill horses, too’ is a weird flex,” mentioned one other.
Many customers mused that the controversy might need derailed her political profession.
“You just put down your VP chances too. Like, all the way down,” one other commenter snarked.
In her Facebook submit Sunday, Noem held up her killing of Cricket for example of her management, and her means to make tough choices.
“Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor,” she wrote.
“As I explained in the book, it wasn’t easy. But often the easy way isn’t the right way.”
The submit had garnered greater than 2,000 feedback inside two hours of posting, the overwhelmingly majority of which had been detrimental.
Noem is an avid hunter, and identified for posting pictures on social media with trophy animal killd.
Currently in her second time period as South Dakota’s governor, Noem served as a state consultant from 2007-2011 and as a member of the US House from South Dakota’s at-large district from 2011-2019.
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