South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) defended executing her dog and a goat, saying “tough decisions” had to be made on a farm, while also revealing that she also killed horses.
“We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote.
“Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years,” Noem said, before adding a link to purchase her book where readers can get “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”
Earlier Friday, The Guardian published an excerpt from Noem’s forthcoming book describing how she led her family dog, Cricket, to a gravel pit and shot her.
Noem writes that the 14-month-old puppy had an “aggressive personality” and was difficult to control. She tried to redirect Cricket’s energy into pheasant hunting but the puppy ruined the hunt by being “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.”
On their way home Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens and tried to bite her.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket was “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment, I realized I had to put her down,” she writes. Noem grabbed her gun and led Cricket to a gravel pit where she executed her.
Noem also bragged that she had to kill one of her “nasty and mean” male goats that smelled “disgusting, musky and rancid.” The goat’s crime was that he “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.
Noem, who is reportedly on a shortlist of potential Trump running mates, claims that executing her dog and a goat shows her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it simply needs to be done.
