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South Dakota governor, a potential Trump running mate, writes in new book about killing her dog (apnews.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20120801

The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.

On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor.

“At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her.

She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state.

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Sure, your young dog, who is still being trained, does something bad because of whatever reason, and instead of trying to find out why that happened and what could be done to prevent it in the future, the first solution you come up with is to kill the dog?? That's not being able to act on tough decisions, that's poor judgement, lack of empathy, signs of psychopathy and just being a bad person

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago

Has she actually made any "tough decisions" that didn't involve killing animals? All she's showing me is that she thinks that killing things is a solution and one she might reach for with an uncomfortable eagerness.

[+] [email protected] -30 points 5 months ago (2 children)

If an animal has killed other people's pets and attacked humans, I think that's past the point of speculating about how you might possibly get it to not do those things in the future. More likely some half measures will be taken, that will fail, and it will happen again. I am biased but dogs that kill other pets should be put down as a matter of law.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, she grew up on a farm, animals are tools, yadda yadda yadda. I can accept that decisions sometimes have to be made that are not meant to be cruel. Here though, the fact that she made the call unilaterally, casually, and without considering other options that might have been available for a dog but not other "livestock." She also stated that she "hated" the dog. Then, the way the article phrases it, it sounds like she got her blood up and decided that it was the day to do all her up close and personal killin' and took out the goat she didn't like. Oh, and let's also not forget that her kids clearly liked the dog. This is what she decides add to her political bona fides.

There's doing what has to be done, and then there's seeming to get off on killing things that are less powerful than you but refuse to bend to your desires.

[+] [email protected] -10 points 5 months ago (3 children)

"refuses to bend to your desires" is pretty far from "killed multiple farm animals and bit a person". This is exactly the situation with many people, with a pitbull named "Princess", which bites, attacks people, and the owners say "oh our boy never hurt a soul he's such a good dog".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

"Puppy on the way home from being trained to hunt birds, kills birds."

[–] xx3rawr 1 points 5 months ago

Fcking exactly. She irresponsibly let loose an untrained bird-hunting pup, still having zoomies from a failed hunt, to a chicken coop. Guess what the pup did? Hunt birds, like it was told to minutes earlier.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago

"random enraged user on Lemmy doesn't know how pointer dogs work but needs to throw their 3c in"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But even then, there are other options to consider first before killing, even more deciding it on your own

[–] [email protected] -5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Behavioral euthanasia is a thing. If you think that she just got the dog, it was all fine and dandy, and then one day it killed a chicken, bit a dude but was otherwise a well behaved good dog, then you are naive. She most likely saw the writing on the wall earlier, worked with the dog (since it was meant to be a working, hunting dog), till the dog went too far and had to be put down. An article reduces all sort of things to a simple "politician bad", calling to emotion. The truth of the matter is she probably knows her shit more than any of us here, you don't get a working dog for the fun of it, as a pet, without knowing anything about them or how to train them. Some dogs can "come back" from aggression, some don't.

See Gold Shaw Farm on youtube, he has two working dogs. One, Toby, is very behaved, guarding the flock, not showing signs of aggression. The second dog he got later is Abby, which is an overexcited, dangerous to the animals dog. He trained both, in fact Abby came later, so he didn't make the mistakes he did with Toby. Yet Abby, after years of training, still shows aggression sometimes and needs to be reeled in. Abby has killed his chickens in the past. Luckily with her, she mostly targetted white chickens, not people or the entire flock, and she has a "paragon of virtue" in Toby, who also sometimes gets her to stop. Yet the owner spayed her, despite wanting to breed farm dogs, because he knew her behavior will probably end up in the puppies.

Now imagine what would happen, if Abby was so dangerous, she would bite people, kill chickens, ducks or geese. She would be out of there in a heartbeat. You simply can't have a working dog that does that. Same with the "failed drug sniffers" where dogs are too excited to work with humans correctly, or have other undesirable traits. They get adopted out of service at best, and if incredibly aggressive and dangerous to people, they get put down.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The linked Guardian has the longer version. Training wasn't going well, but she made a spur of the moment decision that training was done. No rethinking said training. No spaying to keep the traits out of the bloodline. No deciding if a different role in the household would be appropriate. No rehoming the dog to one without birds. No rescue or even a county shelter. Not even a sober discussion with her kids to let them say goodbye and then a humane euthanasia.

No, the dog embarrassed her and cost her money, so she shot it. Then, she was in a killin' mood, so the goat had to go too, apparently the same day. And she did a bad job with that one so it sat there with a gunshot wound until she could get to the truck and back, and there were other people in sight, so it was all safe and well thought out (/s).

Then she brags about it like it was a good thing. I will stand by it: people in rural areas and in agriculture have to have a different relationship with mammalian life and death and have to make tough calls, but this shithead is just cruel.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Okay but we're talking about a fucking puppy who didn't do a damn thing to anyone or anything.

A fucking puppy. The most they can do is chew on something or shit all over the place.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You are talking about a 14 month old working dog. To be a hunting dog, the owner must work with the animal for incredibly long. She saw aggression before, then the dog got out, killed chickens and attacked her. Then she realized it went past the point of no return, You are incredibly naive and basically fell for a call to emotion in a clickbait article.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Tell me about how the goat deserved it next.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Meme all you want, it won't change the fact that you guys live in a totally different realities where a dog is a cute little puppy to be cherished, instead of a companion animal that works alongside you.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Not memeing. You want to defend a psycho bitch you do it all the way. Why did the goat deserve to get capped too?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Why didn't she train the dog correctly? Why wasn't the dog on a fucking leash? Why are you trolling for attention?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago

Because sometimes dogs aggressiveness isn't the matter of training, it's behavioral issues that could in fact never be corrected. Hence behavioral euthanasia.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

My childhood dog killed the family of rabbits in our backyard the first spring we had him. Should we have put him down then and there since he was clearly a killer? What about ky husky that kills ever opossum that she comes across? Dogs are predators and it takes training to keep their killer instincts under control, and even then you can inly do so much.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I think it is a little different if it is your own pets vs someone else's. Why should the rest of community trust the judgment and ability of someone to retrain their dog after something like that, and their assurances that it won't happen again?

and even then you can inly do so much.

If there's a very high chance keeping a dog is going to result in violence being done to the people around you and their pets, maybe it shouldn't be an option in the first place. Breeds of dogs with very high prey drives, ownership of them should probably be more restricted than it is.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago

Has it bitten humans and was overly aggressive towards them too?

[–] Reverendender 52 points 5 months ago

If only this were the worst thing about a Republican candidate for anything

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Surely she went to the vet to do it humanel--

led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her

What a POS.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So, sad story time. We had a pup going on 15 who had health problems, most notably a bum knee that she just wouldn't trust to rehab after surgery when she was 3. For the next ten years, she managed fine, but eventually she was clearly on the downward trend. She was maybe even ready, but I didn't quite think so. Then we found out we had to move. For the briefest moment, I thought it would be easier not to take her with us, but after recoiling that I'd have the thought, I decided I wouldn't make that decision in the middle of a bunch of other stress, and she was a good dog who deserved a thoughtful End of Life thought process.

A couple months after we were all settled and she had her spot in the living room, it became clear that it wasn't just stressed humans. She was clearly declining, and it was time after all. We took her in to the new vet we'd identified, and let them know, but because she hadn't had a checkup with them, and they didn't know us well, they made us do a three day waiting period and asked for our old vet to get a reference that we were responsible pet owners. Then they asked for a full external exam beforehand. They made us jump through hoops, and I for one completely understood, because they didn't know us from Adam and as far as they were concerned we might just be sickos or thieves who make vets kill dogs for the hell of it. We went through it all, and I watched her gently slip away through my teary eyes.

A good vet won't put a healthy pup down for no reason, and being a bad hunting dog who goes after chickens probably wouldn't have been anywhere near a good enough reason. We all face tough decisions. Noem just sounds like the type who has no respect for lives she's entrusted with, only what they can do for her.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

That's incredibly sad and, damn, I'm trying to keep it together reading you. Part of me thinks it's a blessing to be in a country where non-human life is respected to a reasonable degree. I wrote that thinking about the time a dog bit someone I know when they were a kid and the dog was ordered to be put down by a judge. Apparently that was the rule for any animal that attacked people back then in my country. I don't know if things have changed nationwide but I do know that you can get 2-5 years in jail here in my city for harming animals now, so progress?

I'm sorry about your lovely dog. It must've been awful and I can't even imagine losing my own pets because I crumble at the thought. My sincere condolences.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Thank you. It was sad, but the two mantras I have about this are “long life, good life,” and “the only alternative to losing them is never having them.” Life happens. It’s okay.

I’ve lost a few animals over the years and personally put down a wild bird too injured to survive (which still haunts me even though I am convinced it was the right thing to do) so my main point was that Noem is a special kind of callous and that vets wouldn’t immediately put down a young bird-dog that got confused about the exact form of hunting it was expected to be part of.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

That's the least disturbing part of that story.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Trump: “Can I see something in more of a ‘corrects her own mistakes with murder’ kind of vibe?”

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (1 children)

and then someone on some lemmy instance wrote a long ass comment defending it, and explaining how he killed his own dog too. By suffocating it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I read that, and while some of the possible implications are concerning, that was a beloved and elderly dog and OP claims they tried to make it painless and less scary than euthanasia. I am iffy on some of the decisions that were made, but the story as told is pretty much the inverse of an annoyed jackass shooting a 14 month old dog because its training was not going well and she "hated" it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

claims the tried to make it painless

You know whats actually painless? taking them to the vet. where they can be rendered unconscious before stopping their hearts.

not strangling them

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Dude saw that part in I Am Legend when Will Smith suffocated his dog and said, "wow, that looked totally painless and peaceful."

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Psychopath

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

At this point, it seems to be a plus for Republicans.

Perhaps they'll make it official and have them raise a puppy to adulthood and during the Republican National Convention they have to strangle them on stage to prove their total lack of empathy and dedication to the party.

[–] xx3rawr 3 points 5 months ago

After that, she thought, "fuck this goat in partcular" and proceeds to shoot it but failed to kill it, then having it suffer for long because she needs to walk to her truck for more bullets.