Kristi Noem, The Merry Puppy Murderess Of South Dakota, With Her Rendition Of The Gravel Pit Tango!

Cricket did not in fact have it coming.

Decent people learned to their horror last week that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem murdered a dog in cold blood. She wasn’t caught on tape when another dog recorded her on its smartphone. No, as the Guardian reports, she volunteered this information in gruesome detail in her upcoming memoir No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward (also known as I Kill Dogs).

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes. The female dog had an “aggressive personality” and Noem struggled to train Cricket. She took her pheasant hunting one day with older dogs but Cricket, barely more than a puppy, ruined the hunt for Noem by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life.” Cricket behaved like a dog and Noem wouldn’t stand for it. She tried bringing Cricket to heel with an electronic collar, which many animal behavior experts consider cruel and counterproductive. The shock collars can often increase aggression and fear-based actions.

After the failed hunt, Noem stopped to talk with a local family, and Cricket escaped her truck and attacked the family’s chickens. German wirehair pointers have a strong prey drive. That makes them good hunting dogs but it also means they aren’t going to have a great relationship with chickens (i.e. “prey”). Noem is obviously a crap dog trainer and combined with her apparent homicidal tendencies, this did not end well for Cricket.

Noem claims that Cricket “whipped around to bite me” when she tried to grab the dog. She apologized to the distraught chicken owners and wrote them a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime.” She claims that through it all Cricket was “the picture of pure joy,” which is understandable as Cricket was a dog engaging in standard dog behavior.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes with lingering contempt. She declared Cricket “untrainable, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem said as if narrating a Scorsese movie, “I realized I had to put her down.”

There were obviously other options: The Glacial Lakes Humane Society in South Dakota is less than half an hour from Cricket’s chicken attack. There are multiple organizations in the state that would’ve rehomed Cricket. “Putting down a dog” is a last resort when the animal is seriously ill, badly injured, and their overall quality of life has deteriorated. Cricket was a perfectly healthy puppy. There’s no evidence that she was too dangerous to co-exist with people. She killed chickens. That’s what her breed does unless trained otherwise by someone competent and patient — two traits Noem lacks.

When a dog is “put down,” it is most often euthanized. This unfortunately happens a lot when shelters run out of space to house animals. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently pledged to make California the first “no kill” state with mixed results. “Put her down” is a banal description of Noem’s actions. She didn’t have Cricket euthanized. She blew her brains out.

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Beware the dog killer

Noem recounts that she retrieved her gun and led Cricket to a nearby gravel pit.

“It was not a pleasant job,” she writes, “but it had to be done.”

It didn’t have to be done. This wasn’t Old Yeller. She wasn’t attempting to spare Cricket from suffering. She disposed of Cricket because she believed the dog had outlived her usefulness. This was a mob hit.

“And after it was over,” Noem said chillingly, “I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

Noem’s next victim was a male goat her family owned that she describes as “nasty and mean,” because it wasn’t castrated. Noem thought the goat smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” — you know like a goat. The goat “loved to chase” Noem’s children and would knock them down and ruin their clothing. I think if you live among goats, you should wear clothing that holds up to the occasional goat contact.

There were humane resolutions to her dilemma: Noem could’ve had the goat castrated to improve its mood or given the goat away, but once again she chose violent death. It’s apparently her go-to. She “dragged” the goat into the gravel pit but the goat jumped when she shot it and managed to barely survive. Noem returned to her truck, got another shell, and “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down.”

As the Doctor would say, “Easy enough to destroy. Have you ever tried creating one?”

I’m not a therapist, although I have at least two sofas, but it seems obvious that Noem killed Cricket in a fit of rage. She was pissed and embarrassed and wanted the dog dead. She was still fuming afterward so she murdered a goat.

Her killing spree complete — for now, Noem noticed that a construction crew had watched the whole thing. They quickly returned to work in case Noem decided not to leave any witnesses. At this point, a school bus dropped off Noem’s children with darkly comic timing.

Her daughter Kennedy “looked around confused” and asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?” Warm-blooded mammals usually discuss with their children the difficult decision to “put down” a family pet. (This all occurred about 20 years ago, so God knows how many more Crickets, goats, and tax collectors are piled up in that gravel pit by now.)

The canine murderer for vice president!

Kristi Noem is a leading contender to serve as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate. (Trump’s previous vice president, Mike Pence, refuses to endorse him after he almost had him killed on January 6.) Noem apparently shared this repulsive story to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly,” but Trump just wants someone who’ll wipe their bottom with the Constitution for him. He doesn’t need dog killers in his administration. He already has an army of Proud Boys “standing by,” many of whom probably have animal abuse in their juvenile records.

After the story broke on Friday, Noem stood by her animal slaughter. She posted on social media, “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

Veterinarians can humanely euthanize horses who are gravely injured or otherwise suffering. In an emergency, when a veterinarian is not available, a gunshot to the head is often the only option, but I’m afraid it was the preferred choice for a sadist like Noem.

Charlotte Clymer

suggested that Noem told her puppy-killing horror story because she thought it would help her stand out among the vicious MAGA pack. She’d show Trump that “she can 1) be ruthless and 2) ‘trigger the libs’ effortlessly.”

“Good lord, there are a lot of things folks will forgive in this country, but proudly murdering an innocent puppy is not one of them,” Clymer wrote. “That might be the only truly bipartisan issue in our country: don’t murder puppies.”

There was definite bipartisan revulsion to Noem’s story. It’s not like Cricket was a Black teen in a hoodie.

Democrats and many Republicans (especially her rivals for the VP slot) called out Noem’s cruelty and shared photos of their beloved pets, who they haven’t shot in the head. Even MAGA loon Laura Loomer was disgusted.

“She can’t be VP now,” Loomer posted on social media. “You can’t shoot your dog and then be VP.”

Megyn Kelly posted, “Very grateful my Strudwick wound up with us and not with Kristi Noem.”

Right-wing journalist Tim Pool wondered if Noem had “intentionally” ended her career. Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide, couldn’t understand why Noem would drop such damning oppo on herself. “I’m not sure why anyone would brag about this unless they’re sick and twisted,” she said.

The pro-Trump “Catturd” account apparently also loves dogs:

“Omg — now my blood is boiling. Remember, I’m a country boy who lives on a ranch . There’s a huge difference between putting an old horse down who is suffering, than shooting a 18 month dog for being untrainable. But then to plug your book at the end.”

Brendon Leslie, CEO of the right-wing Florida Voice News, said, “Kristi Noem should be criminally charged for animal abuse — this is vile and disgusting. It’s one thing to put a dog down that is sick — it’s totally unacceptable to put a puppy down because it wasn’t a good hunting dog. Put it up for adoption!”

Soon, #PuppyKiller and #KristiNoemIsAMonster were trending on Elon Musk’s $44 billion blog.

Noem was in full damage control mode on Sunday morning, although the “clean up” efforts mainly involved victim blaming and more shameless promotion of her book.

“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,” she posted on social media. “The book is filled with many honest stories of my life, good and bad days, challenges, painful decisions, and lessons learned.”

We’re not buying your snuff book, lady, just stop.

“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.”

She’s twisting the law here. The chicken owners could’ve shot Cricket if they caught her in the act, but Cricket wasn’t a random stray who wandered onto their property. Noem stopped at their house and Cricket got of her truck. This was entirely Noem’s fault. She knew Cricket was aggressive and not well-trained, but she chose to stop for a social visit at the home of someone with chickens. She set Cricket up!

Noem is a liar, a coward, and a bully who kills puppies and goats that smell goats. If she wanted to prove that she’s a suitably repugnant running mate for Donald Trump, she’s succeeded.

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