When Richard Nixon, a Republican running for vice president in 1952, acknowledged accepting a dog named Checkers as a political present, it caused controversy.
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When Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate for president in 2012, he came under fire for strapping his dog, Seamus, to the top of the family vehicle during a cross-country journey.
However, in 2024, Kristi Noem—a serious candidate to be the Republican nominee’s running mate—managed to go one step farther by acknowledging that she had killed a dog of her own.
The South Dakota governor describes Cricket in a new book as a wirehair pointer that was around 14 months old. She had a “aggressive personality” and required training in order to be employed for pheasant hunting.
The events that transpire over the following few pages demonstrate how that attempt went horribly wrong and, astonishingly, how Noem decided to murder more household animals than only Cricket one day during hunting season.
Next month in the US, Noem’s book, No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, will be released. A copy was obtained by The Guardian.
Similar to other candidates vying to be Trump’s second vice president who have dabbled in publishing, Noem provides readers with a blend of autobiography, policy recommendations, and political criticism directed towards Democrats and other adversaries, all of which serve as fodder for speeches made on the campaign trail.
She claims that the reason she shares her tale of the unfortunate Cricket is to demonstrate her readiness to do anything “difficult, messy, and ugly” if it is necessary, both in politics and in day-to-day living in South Dakota.
Noem says she thought that by taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with more experienced dogs, she would be able to soothe Cricket and start teaching her manners. Regretfully, Cricket spoilt the hunt by being “crazy, chasing all those birds, and having the best time of her life.”
Noem talks about trying to control Cricket by calling her and then putting on an electric collar. Nothing was successful. After the hunt, Cricket broke out of Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s hens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another,” as Noem stopped to chat with a nearby family on the way home.
Noem describes Cricket the untrainable dog as acting like “a trained assassin.”
Cricket allegedly “whipped around to bite me” when Noem eventually managed to grasp hold of the dog. Noem then gave the stunned family a check “for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime” while the owner of the birds sobbed.
According to Noem, Cricket was “the picture of pure joy” throughout it all.
“I detested that dog,” Noem says, going on to say that Cricket had shown to be “less than worthless… as a hunting dog,” “untrainable,” and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.”
Noem states, “I realized I had to put her down at that very moment.”
After obtaining her gun, Noem—who also served as her state’s congressional representative for eight years—led Cricket to a gravel dump.
She writes, “It was an unpleasant task, but it had to be done. And once it was done, I realized there was still another painful task to be completed.
Amazingly, Noem’s story of carnage is not over yet.
She also writes about how her family had a male goat that was “nasty and mean” as it hadn’t been castrated. In addition, the goat “loved to chase” Noem’s kids, bringing them to the ground and scuffing their clothes, and it smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid.”
Noem chose to murder the nameless goat in the same manner that she had recently murdered Cricket the dog. Despite the fact that she “dragged him to a gravel pit,” the goat escaped the gunshot wound by jumping as she fired. According to Noem, she “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down” after returning to her truck and getting another shell.
It was then, Noem writes, that she realized she had killed both animals in front of a construction crew. She reports that after the shocked workers quickly returned to their jobs, Noem’s kids were dropped off by a school bus.
Noem describes Kennedy’s reaction when her daughter questioned, “Hey, where’s Cricket?” as “Kennedy looked around confused.”
In response to Noem’s account of killing her dog and goat, there were satirical responses on Friday. Tommy Vietor, a former Obama adviser who is now a podcaster, called the governor “Jeffrey Dahmer with veneers,” a reference to a well-known serial killer, and there was also a recent controversy surrounding Noem’s cosmetic dentistry procedures.
However, the majority of replies were just disgusting, especially those from dog enthusiasts and those who go hunting with their dogs.
Noem was referred to by Rick Wilson of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project as “trash” and “deliberately cruel.” The Democratic nominee for governor of Montana, Ryan Busse, declared: “This is repulsive, lazy, and wicked to anyone who has ever owned a birddog.” Oh no.
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Noem acknowledged that she had “put down three horses” recently in a screengrab of the Guardian article that she had posted.
She remarked, “We adore animals, but on a farm, difficult decisions like these arise all the time. We had to put down three horses who had been in our family for 25 years, regrettably, a few weeks ago.
The governor said, “More honest, real, and politically incorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping” were in her book.
But in the book, she offers up what could end up being a candidate for the greatest understatement of election year when she summarizes her tale of Cricket the dog and the anonymous, uncastrated goat: “I guess I wouldn’t tell the story here if I were a better politician.”
