South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem defended her “hard and painful” decision to shoot her 14-month-old hunting dog, Cricket, following a rising tide of criticism after she made the eyebrow-raising revelations in her upcoming book.
“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 said in a Facebook post 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 becp,e former President Donald Trump’s running mate — ignited a firestorm when The Guardian published excerpts from an advance copy of her memoir No Going Back.
In it, the governor writes about shooting dead a “less than worthless” wirehair pointer puppy that she said she “hated,” punctuating the story with the heartbreaking detail that her daughter, Kennedy, “looked around confused” when she came home from school that day, asking, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Noem claimed in her book that Cricket had an “aggressive personality” and was “untrainable,” apparently failing to learn to hunt from other dogs and instead attacking chickens on the farm like a “trained assassin.”
The book also contains 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, including a plug for her book at the end.
The post was savaged online, and flooded with negative comments from outraged dog lovers.
“You are actual garbage,” one user wrote.
“‘I kill horses, too’ is a weird flex,” said another.
Many users mused that the controversy might have derailed her political career.
“You just put down your VP chances too. Like, all the way down,” another commenter snarked.
In her Facebook post Sunday, Noem held up her killing of Cricket as an example of her leadership, and her ability to make difficult decisions.
“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 post had garnered more than 2,000 comments within two hours of posting, the overwhelmingly majority of which were negative.
Noem is an avid hunter, and known for posting pictures on social media with trophy animal killd.
Currently in her second term as South Dakota’s governor, Noem served as a state representative from 2007-2011 and as a member of the US House from South Dakota’s at-large district from 2011-2019.