My dad grew up on a farm in the Dakotas and has some stories about animal cruelty that are really awful. His dad, my grandfather, would take care of the excess kitten population by putting them in a burlap sack and throwing them in the river. Dogs were routinely euthanized by shooting them when they could no longer provide service. I’m sure that a dog that killed chickens (which is what Kristi Noem’s dog did) would have been shot as soon as they caught him or her. I don’t think that my dad’s family were outliers here. My father-in-law, also a Dakota farmer, had about the same attitude towards dogs and cats. The real outlier was wife’s grandfather, another Dakota farmer, a gentle man who took exceptionally (for the time) good care of his dogs as well as any other animal on his farm.
The second experience I’ve had growing up is watching hunters who keep dogs. These people keep their retrievers in pens/runs, frustrated and barking all the time, until hunting season. I’m sure there’s some training involved, but those dogs have what I’d consider a miserable life except for the few days when they’re out doing what they were bred to do. I’ll bet you a shiny South Dakota quarter, which features both a pheasant and Mt. Rushmore, that Kristi’s un-neutered dog Cricket spent most of his life in a pen waiting to retrieve pheasants.
So, when Noem shares an anecdote about killing 14 month-old Cricket after he she killed some chickens and bit her, she’s speaking to two specific audiences. The first is an audience informed by the same life experience I’ve had*: people who know that farmers treat dogs like livestock and understand that a dog that can’t do their job needs to be euthanized. This audience is generally white, mostly male, older, with a background either working on a farm or having parents/grandparents who worked on the farm. It is also a tiny audience, mostly living in red states where Trump will win even if he was caught engaging in human sacrifice. The second is a bunch of cruel, heartless fucking sadists. Donald Trump is in the latter group.
Unfortunately for term-limited Gov. Noem, she miscalculated. She looked at the way the DC press treats country folk (condescending but afraid to challenge their quaint country traditions) and thought she’d get some “well she’s authentic” coverage. She also didn’t figure that the Guardian, which is based in a country with a long record of humane treatment of animals, would read her book and break the story with a critical eye.
In other words, cucking her husband with Corey Lewandowski, making a commercial for the dental clinic that did her veneers, and generally being an awful person, weren’t enough to sink her VP bid. I’m guessing Trump’s reaction to the bad PR she’s getting because she bragged about killing her dog 20 years ago (and a goat) probably did it, but predictions are hard, especially about the future.
———–
*Just to be clear, I had that life experience and concluded that I think this treatment of dogs is a cruel anachronism. I had to have our dog euthanized by the vet when she was diagnosed with incurable liver cancer, and it was a terrible experience that I never want to repeat.
SW
I have the same background but it never stopped me from calling out the miserable fucks who debased themselves in that manner.
Mike in NC
Alexandra Petri in the Washington Post today: “Kristi, darling, I understand completely,” by Cruella De Vil
dr. bloor
Every element of your last paragraph, including (and perhaps particularly) killing a dog, would be an enhancement in Trump’s eyes, not a negative factor. This guy is off-the-charts depraved.
Jharp
I remember my Grandmother telling us that her Mom felt sorry for the kittens she was drowning so she made sure to use warm water. This in the Appalachian part of southern Ohio.
Nukular Biskits
I’ve never understood people who would willingly kill a pet for no other reason than it was an annoyance.
Ditto for folks who dump unwanted animals in the woods because “they can fend for themselves”.
Assholes.
Edit: I have had experience (growing up) where we had animals either suffer or we had the vet put them down because we simply did not have the money to give them the medical care they needed. Years later, I still think about these.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
We were the outliers when we moved to red, rurl, Central Misery in 1996 and started taking in the cat strays, getting them fixed and providing homes for them on the grounds of the B&B.
The conservative assholes around us were as described above in terms of treatment of animals.
But if we ever had an impact during our 22 years there, it was showing people in the area that you could be kind and decent to animals. Over that time span, we had a fair number of neighbors start taking in strays, getting them fixed, finding homes, etc. Or treating their dogs better.
These people always felt this way but because of the unspoken social pressure in small, rurl areas like that, never felt confident enough to do humane things until we arrived, looked around at what was going on and said, loudly and often, Fuck. That. Shit.
Noem doesn’t realize that there are plenty of entitled, (Nice), (P)olite, (R)epublican voters somewhere other than red, rurl counties, that have dogs and cats they adore and more importantly, precious children who’ve never even smelled “fresh country air” much less seen a cow patty, or hunt…but adore their pet dog or cat.
Doc Sardonic
Two things
1. Not another one of these fucking posts.
2. What Noem did probably has Mango Mussolini’s Lil’ Kinopio harder than Roman concrete. But did not help her case for VP because right now she is generating bad “ratings” and for Mango it’s all about the ratings.
rachel
@dr. bloor: True, but he’s also extremely sensitive about public image. The moment he understands how bad this story made her look to the general public (and how ridiculous he’d look for choosing her) that’s if for her VP bid.
SW
It’s the same mindset that permeates their policies regarding their indigenous citizens.
theturtlemoves
My mom grew up on a farm in South Dakota up on the ND border in the Perkins / Harding county area and she didn’t have any tales of dog killing. Must have just been you sickos out in East River. :) Well, that or my family was similar to your wife’s grandfather.
EarthWindFire
@SW: Me too. I learned recently that my grandfather had shot a dog that got in the way during a cattle drive. I was horrified. Doing that in an era where there are rescues freaking everywhere? No excuse.
dr. bloor
@rachel: Fair. Although it probably locks up a cabinet appointment to HHS if he wins.
HumboldtBlue
Sister Golden Bear
The good news: On Friday, “The Biden administration announced expansive new protections on Friday for gay and transgender medical patients, prohibiting federally funded health providers and insurers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” by reversing a Trump-era ruling. Don’t get me wrong, this is a big Joe Biden deal — although why it took 3-1/2 years… But I’m glad to see Biden actually taking action to help us, rather than continuing to promise to take action.
The bad news:
Three other Red state governors have also vowed to disregard the law.
The ugly: The suit was filed in the district of far-right Christian nationalist Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who most recently is behind the push to ban abortion pills nationwide.
So I’m sure Kacsmaryk will shortly be issuing a nationwide ban on legalizing anti-trans discrimination that goes well beyond Title IX. Because reasons. Because that’s what Jeebus would want. Hopefully that’ll be overturned on appeal (hopefully), but in the meantime it’ll give cover for Red states to continue to outlaw our existence.
BTW, for those who think I’m overreacting, only a few years trans people were told we were being hysterical when we warned that the Christo-fascists wouldn’t stop at bathroom bills.
Jharp
@NukularDitto for folks who dump unwanted animals in the woods because “they can fend for themselves”.
This really pisses me off cause they get dumped in the park across from my home compounding the huge nuisance wildlife problem in my neighborhood. Then my neighbors feed them making matters even worse.
I learned form camping and hiking in bear country. Do not leave food out. Food = nuisance wildlife.
A bad situation for humans and the critters.
Quaker in a Basement
Thanks for this post mistermix. I made similar observations on another site and some folks lost their minds, declaring that I was taking Noem’s side and therefore I am JUST AS BAD AS SHE IS!!1!
Some folks. Sheesh.
Gretchen
@Doc Sardonic: you don’t have to read it.
Nukular Biskits
@Jharp:
This is one of the reasons I’m adamant about people neutering/spaying their animals as well as not patronizing breeders.
I know that a lot of folks have an affinity with certain breeds and I understand that. But there are way too many animals sitting in shelters just waiting for someone to adopt them without breeders creating more.
JMHO.
smith
@SW: I was going to mention the other high point in her Republican cred: she’s banned from going onto about 10% of the land in South Dakota, because the tribes whose land it is greatly resent that she keeps asserting that they collaborate with Mexican drug cartels.
I’m guessing she uses this slander to justify being oh so concerned about the Southern border.
geg6
@Sister Golden Bear:
I, for one, do NOT think you are overreacting. {{hugs}}
hueyplong
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m guessing you didn’t receive very many scoffs at your concerns here. We’re relatively sensitive to right wing campaign expansion here.
suzanne
I’ve had about half of my pets pass at home, and the others were humanely euthanized by a vet. Shooting a pet, unless there is literally no way to safely euthanize them quickly to put them out of their misery, is monstrous.
Yeah, I’m judging your shitty cultural traditions. 100%.
Another Scott
Nit: Noem said Cricket was female. (Dunno if she was spayed; I doubt it.)
Cheers,
Scott.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Oh, yeah, the British are well known for treating their animals better than their children. Just as one data point, The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was formed (1824) far earlier than the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1883).
Doc Sardonic
@Gretchen: You are right, unfortunately all I needed was the picture to know what this was all about. I think it is time to give this place a break, apparently ya’ll can’t figure out that Noem is a gargantuan piece of shit, lower than whale skat at the bottom of the ocean. The images these dog post conjure up for me are not doing me any good. I have enough fucking nightmares.
See ya
SiubhanDuinne
Stephen Colbert is famously a dog lover, and sometimes does live (and adorable!) puppy-rescue segments. He should be back from a week’s vacation tonight; I’m guessing he’s going to talk about Noem, and I’m guessing he’s going to be brutal.
Euthanasia is an unhappy but sometimes unavoidable fact of farm life. Killing an exuberant 14-month-old puppy who was, in Noem’s own words, “having the time of her life” and “out of her mind with excitement,” is not.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Another Scott: Thanks – it was the goat that was un-neutered. I updated the post.
$8 blue check mistermix
@suzanne:
I think there are a lot of ways to humanely euthanize an animal. I’ll confess that I tried to give our dog some Tramadol (left over from a surgery she had) before going to the vet but her appetite was gone — she wouldn’t even take it when it was coated with liver sausage. I was hoping to take her to the vet pretty out of it. But she *loved* going to the vet. She was totally treat motivated and the vets had some good treats. So when we got there she walked around sniffing happily and then we went in and she had the injection and that was it.
I’m imagining that my wife’s grandfather walked his old, hurting dog that he loved, and who loved him, out to a pasture with his shotgun and the dog didn’t know what hit him or her. What’s monstrous about Kristi’s story, in my opinion, is that Cricket was 14 months old and never given a chance.
sab
@suzanne: Never killed a pet that wasn’t on death’s doorstep at advanced old age. You can always rehome them ( never did that either. You take them in they are yours for life,)
geg6
@Jharp:
We live across the street from the local Humane Society. People dump the on the lawn, where they may try to cross the road (a main artery north to south through the county) and get hit by a car. If they make it, they end up in our yard. We’ve rescued a few from that, including one dog that literally lept into my arms. Sometimes they tie them up to a telephone pole or a speed sign and leave them there all night. We’ve called the cops many times. I get infuriated by those people and I can’t even think of a word to describe how I feel about that psycho Noem and people like her. And yes, I knew people like them and it never was normal to me. My grandfather had hunting beagles. But he treated them very well. They weren’t pets like my pets are, but they were warm and dry, had plenty high quality food and got plenty of exercise in the big run he had in the backyard. He trained them regularly, too. His old dogs lived out their lives with dignity. There’s no reason to treat working dogs like cows, pigs and chickens, which are usually killed for food and even if it’s for disposition reasons, are still eaten and not wasted.
Leto
My mother’s parents had a chicken farm when she was born, so she was very used to the “go get tonight’s dinner” style of farming. She would went fishing, and routinely had to gut/clean the fish. If a dog was in the road while we in the car, she wouldn’t slow down.
With that being said, she taught me to be extremely kind to all animals. The first time I held a BB gun (approx age 5-6) she said, “Remember: if you shoot and kill a bird, you’re plucking cleaning it and we’re going to eat it.” My older cousin was with me, and he ofc shoots a robin. He’s also in that latter category. I was so upset that I went and told my mom, who proceeded to snatch both our asses and brought us to the bird. She then proceeds to grill us on who did what, who’s going to clean it, but more importantly did we know whether this was a boy or girl bird? Is this a mom who will no longer be able to care for her eggs, or newborn chicks? It’s one of those life lessons that’s seared into me.
I understand the farmer’s perspective on a non-performing animal. Logically I do. But I will always consider people who mistreat animals as below even the worst of the worst. Akin to child molesters/predators. And I know they have crossover.
Baud
@$8 blue check mistermix:
Nominated.
suzanne
@$8 blue check mistermix:
I have a big problem with shooting them. It’s very easy to miss or do a non-lethal shot and they suffer more.
SomeRandomFellow
I get the idea that, sometimes, shooting an animal is the best economic solution. Too many feral cats or dogs is a bad thing, as well. I get that. But….
What I don’t get is, how do you have *two* animals, where, one day, you decide you’ll kill one animal you dislike, and then, kill a dirty, stinky, billy goat who you also dislike, and you don’t even tell your kids what’s going on until it’s over.
To me, it reads like anger and frustration, not a sad realization that the dog can’t be trained. Throwing in the killing of what sounds like a normal billy goat (NB: not an expert on goats) at the same time, and I’d call it a killing tantrum. Throw in how she was killing a named dog (farm rule: don’t name an animal you intend to eat), and HER CHILDREN DIDN’T KNOW, and I confess: my brain locks into killing-tantrum. It was made easier by kitten drownings and dog shootings and herd culling I’m sure – but it was still a killing tantrum.
To me, it shows that she’s just like she was during Covid-19: as long as she doesn’t know (or simply doesn’t care about) the people or animals who die, it’s just something to ignore. Oh, sometimes you’ll have to make some Very Serious People comments on “necessity” the way they do about warfare. “People die in a war, you can’t blame us just because we *started* the war!” is a weak argument, but amazingly effective in the US press.
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: Paxton claims that he’s protecting women. I wonder if he’s talked to women of childbearing age or their friends and family about “protection”.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
This whole post, including the headline, needs a fucking trigger warning.
This is a politics and PETS blog. We love our critters. Some of us do not want to hear about animal cruelty, especially in a jokey manner. Read the room, MM!
tokyokie
When I was in high school, I spent a week with a friend’s family because my parents were out of the country. Anyway, the friend’s family had a goofy Irish setter that the father wanted to train to be a bird dog, and as the weekend I was with them was the week before hunting season began, we went out to land the family owned out in the countryside to familiarize everybody, including the dog, with the terrain. The dog was terrible as a bird dog, always barking when she detected birds and bouncing around like the goofball she was. And this behavior enraged the father, who beat the dog until she was whining repeatedly for every mistake she made, and she made a mistake virtually every time, pointing to nonexistent birds and barking at real ones. I felt terribly sorry for the dog, and I don’t even like dogs, and I didn’t understand why she had to be a working dog when she was a loving and lovable pet. Isn’t that enough?
By the same token, I recently figured out that before my father (and immediate family) was transferred out of the country, my mother had the family’s Siamese cat put down. Tuco (named for the Eli Wallach character from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and possessing many aspects of that character’s personality) was the first cat that was MY cat. He slept with me every night, and I played with him every day. He was small, extremely smart, and liked to bite people’s chins after cuddling with them and then dashing away. He once caught a chimney swift inside the house, jumping up into the chimney, batting the bird to the fireplace floor, then retrieving his prey and running to the back of the house with it. He would spend the day outside playing with the neighbors’ cat, with each cat going to the other’s back yard and mewling for his playmate to be let outside. I think the neighbors would have been delighted to adopt Tuco, but I don’t think my mother even asked them. Tuco had become inconvenient, so he had to die.
I just don’t understand how people can be that way. But then I’m not a Republican.
AWOL
Dogs? Goats? Chickens?
But she’s too young to be the Fernwood Killer.
Eyeroller
Cricket was a she.
I mentioned when this came up earlier, but my grandfather was born in 1905 in Turtle Creek, West Virginia, which is apparently in the vicinity of Charleston. The family moved to rural Arkansas when he was 11. His father seems to have been abusive to the wife and kids. No big surprise there. They ran some kind of country store in Arkansas, so they weren’t farmers/ranchers, but were still poor and lived in a very rural area. He hunted anything he could as a kid and youth and continued after he married and had kids, because they were still poor. He wasn’t too interested in pets but he let the kids have a dog which eventually they thought had rabies (they were probably right) so he shot it. Up till the first half of the Depression they ate squirrels and rabbits and a lot of opossums, which are apparently pretty greasy and awful (my mother and uncle and aunt hated it). But once he got a decent job and could afford to buy meat, he stopped hunting and never did it again. He told me it was wrong to kill an animal for fun or sport. He didn’t sentimentalize animals, but he respected their lives. He would have been appalled by this story.
Sister Golden Bear
@hueyplong: I didn’t get scoffs, but there were a few who defended bathroom bills, and then later, bans on trans girl/women competing in women’s sports.
BJ has generally come a long way since then.
Jay
Everybody I knew/know who had a hunting dog, spoiled them rotten, but then they arn’t/wern’t rich.
Bird dogs/retrievers/hounds with any kind of hunting pedigree are not cheap and have never been cheap here. Training them and keeping them trained and handled isn’t cheap either.
The dogs/owners I knew/know have a fairly simple routine, lap dog/couch dog/bed dog, house pet, dog park, simulated group hunting events, training, then hunting season, which would usually be a couple weekends over 3 months in the fall.
My Dad bought Tar, a puppy, for $1500 in 1969 on a Cops salary. That was more than he paid for our car. Tar was supposed to be a Black Cocker Spaniel from a long line of Pedigreed Upland Gamebird Field Dogs. He was not, he was at least 90% Black Lab. He was never a hunting dog, he was a kids dog.
CaseyL
This is a horrifying post. I don’t mean to be harsh at MisterMix, but: I don’t care how rural and difficult ranching and farming is, there are ways to “get rid of” dangerous or unwanted animals that don’t involve willful cruelty.
Maybe not 40, 50 years ago, but nowadays? Even South Dakota must have a shelter here and there. The sadistic shit Noem can take time away from her goddamn ranch to go campaign all over the country, she can damned well take the time to take the dog (and possibly the goat) to a shelter.
If people can’t be bothered treating animals as living creatures, maybe they shouldn’t be working with animals. Even as livestock. (And, yes, I do hate factory farming; and yes, I am a meat eater, and I get my meat from Butcher Box.)
Scout211
@Sister Golden Bear: Did you see this that I posted downstairs? A bit of good news today.
Here’s some good news: AP News
. . .
Martin
So, I think mistermix is on the right analysis here. It doesn’t really matter the circumstances of killing the animal. I mean, it does, but generally that’s not for us to know. The issue here is that she thought it was a good idea to tell this story in this way.
She didn’t tell it as a redemption story ‘I did this terrible thing, and I’m now a better person’. She didn’t tell it as a tragic story ‘unfortunately, I had to put this animal down’. She told it as a positive reflection of her character. I’m willing to kill my kids dog because I’m too lazy to train it, please be proud of me, oh yeah, the goat was annoying. (Some dogs are either untrainable or beyond the skills of normal people to do so, but that’s not how the story comes off.) You can change that circumstance a million different ways where killing the dog is justifiable and so long as you tell the story in this manner, you sound like a fucking monster. What’s more, she either is unaware that most Americans think killing dogs is horrifying (does she not get the soft focus folk singer backed commercials in SD?) or most Republicans don’t think it’s horrifying (which I find hard to believe – though the Mitt Romney story makes me wonder).
So, okay, you did this thing – I don’t care if you regret or not – don’t fucking tell that story. You don’t see us coming in here all proud every time we take a glorious shit, do you? That story was told for a reason. That says as much about her political instincts and motives as killing the dog does.
EarthWindFire
Me too. I also understand that in our parents and grandparents day, there wouldn’t have been another home to give a non-performing farm animal. No farmer has that excuse now. Rescues are everywhere, including farming communities.
Kristi Noem has given further proof that she’s scum in a way that resonates for a lot of people in the way that her being kept off reservations doesn’t. It’s sad and horrifying that this is the case, but it is.
Sister Golden Bear
@Scout211: That is good news. Especially given it’s coming from the 4th Circuit.
Manyakitty
@Sister Golden Bear: at this point (or even before, frankly) anyone who accuses you of overreacting isn’t paying attention.
Betty Cracker
I grew up in the sticks, partially. My father kept chickens, horses, the occasional cow, hunting dogs, etc. Livestock got dispatched. Elderly horses were put down with a gun in extremis because they are hard to move.
No one shot a dog. Ever. We knew about people who did. We considered it horrendous. Dogs weren’t livestock to us; they were pets.
Also, I don’t see any reason to take Noem’s claim about the dog trying to bite her at face value. She’s an awful person and a Trump cultist and therefore okay with cruelty and lots of lies.
By Noem’s own account, her kid was looking for the dog immediately after exiting the school bus. Sounds to me like the dog and kid had spent time together.
Jay
@Martin:
I have never met a dog that was untrainable. I have met a lot of untrained, unsocialized dogs, (more so since Covid), I have met however, no shortage of dog owners who have no idea on how to train a dog and no interest in learning.
Eyeroller
@Martin: “I hated that dog so I made the tough decision to kill it.” That seems to be literally her argument. Even though poor Cricket didn’t really do anything wrong. Her breed has a high prey drive so Kristi was an incompetent owner. As to the goat, despite supposedly being a rancher she was apparently unaware that an intact male goat stinks and is aggressive. Why didn’t anybody tell her? Off to the gravel pit with him.
SW
She told that story in the manner that she told it because for the hard core MAGA the cruelty is the point.
Daoud bin Daoud
@SomeRandomFellow: Noem is a classic MAGA Reichwing psychopath. Have a problems? Grab a gun and kill them – animals, and people you regard as animals.
CHETAN R MURTHY
I grew up in a rural Texas town. Parents routinely paddled and otherwise beat their children, and so did schools. We used to make jokes about the principal’s paddle, on which he’d drilled holes for extra pain. It was all so, so, so normal.
But I cannot remember, upon reaching adulthood, ever, ever, ever thinking that was ever normal or right. I sure AF wouldn’t boat about that shit.
There’s a thing called the “authoritarian personality”. One of the indicators is having grown up in an environment when these sorts of brutality were commonplace.
It’s not a good thing, Gov. Noem you shouldn’t be proud of it.
Leto
@EarthWindFire: agreed.
hueyplong
@Sister Golden Bear: I live in NC, so I take bathroom bills extra seriously.
SiubhanDuinne
@Eyeroller:
Where was Joni Ernst (“The Fearless Castrator”) when Kristi really could have used her? Iowa and South Dakota aren’t all that far apart.
Ksmiami
@Nukular Biskits: I actually want to pay Siberian breeders to stop for awhile because due to a certain fantasy tv show, there are tons of these amazing animals in shelters rn.
karen gail
From rural Wisconsin; white, white farmers, during the 50’s. Dairy farm family, dogs were pets and workers; when dog became to old to herd or hunt they spent their time on porch as watch dogs and company for elderly and children.
I know that when a horse could no longer work it was butchered for dog food; farmer down road from uncle discovered that butchering old horses and selling meat to city people made him more money than selling calves. He didn’t stop selling calves, but he put money from sale of dog food into projects that would be able to afford otherwise.
I had dairy goats, a intact buck will pee on his front feet to make himself smell “enticing” to does. I also know that if you teach a buck manners they don’t attack unless defending.
A Ghost to Most
After being stationed in Nebraska, and hearing that the Daks were worse, I stay out of the Daks.
cain
@Nukular Biskits:
Guess who thinks they can take advantage of folks like ourselves who care about pets.
https://stateline.org/2024/03/29/vets-fret-as-private-equity-snaps-up-clinics-pet-care-companies/
private equity firms are eyeing our pets and thinking that they can do what they did for housing.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
We often speculate about Sammy’s life in rural WV before he came to us. He was picked up as a stray at the estimated age of 18 months and then shipped to PA to have a better chance of adoption. He is very beagle-ish in appearance and behavior but long-legged for a beagle. Some people think maybe he’s got foxhound in him.
He didn’t appear to have any experience with play or with living in a house when we adopted him. So we speculate he was an entirely outdoor dog, or kept on a chain. Perhaps meant to be a hunter but for some reason that didn’t work out. Maybe dumped on a country road?
He also came to us with a full load of parasites. Three intestinal parasites simultaneously his first few months, and then heartworm the following year.
He is very playful but occasionally some dogs find him a little intimidating. A trainer commented that he “plays like a pit bull.”
Martin
@Jay: We had a rescue we couldn’t train faster than it could require me to get stitches. It had the most aggressive guarding behavior I’ve ever seen and it decided my wife was the thing to guard. If I went in the same room as her he’d instantly go teeth for my ankles. This was years ago and I still have scars. We tried _really_ hard and made a little progress, but weren’t skilled enough to do it.
He was pretty good around my daughter but would guard my wife against her a little – teeth bared, but no bite. He did nearly drag her down the block when there was a coyote between her and the house and the dog went for the coyote. I didn’t think the dog was untrainable, but we were pretty experienced training dogs, and we just couldn’t get there. We had to return him to the rescue.
If I had to guess this dog was rescued from a domestic violence household.
Jay
@Martin:
It’s hard to tell, but because of inbreeding, some dogs have issues they can’t be trained out of. It is usually something that is tested for.
I would agree with your guess, but, I would add aggression to domestic? abuse.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: More good news! (via Erin Reed):
geg6
@UncleEbeneezer:
Fantastic news!
Noskilz
I’m just curious at how these clowns like Noem are frantically auditioning to be Trump VP – is that how this process usually works? Seems like picking a VP usually a little more discreet than this time around.
SiubhanDuinne
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Right. And at the moment, we’re dealing with the “politics” part. Like it or not, the Kristi Noem story is currently a growing political story. Maybe it’ll still have legs in a week, maybe it will have been supplanted by some other shiny-object story. Doesn’t matter; right now, it’s a legitimate topic of conversation, distasteful and disgusting though it may be.
I completely understand that a lot of people don’t want to read about it or think about it. I get it. It’s a horrible, horrible story. Scroll on by; nobody will blame you.
But — speaking for myself — I feel a need to know exactly how awful these MAGAts are, in order that I am as well-armed as possible when they come calling with their fucking right-wing bullshit.
Ruckus
@Noskilz:
They know that SFB is losing it. They know that if they become VP the chances are good that they will end up in the top spot. I’m sort of thinking that SFB won’t be the president, sure he’s got a lot of republican support, but he’s also likely lost/will lose more as he is showing a not all that slow decline, aging out if you will. Not everyone lives into their 90s, although healthcare has made that more likely/possible. But SFB thinks he is the epitome of humanity, and of course he’s not even close. Like from here to the sun not close. There is a reason I call him ShitForBrains.
JaneE
Some of my family are just like your grandfather. My uncle had a couple of bird dogs he hunted with. The way they were treated – dog house and outside run, in all weather, all year – was different from the family pet dog who lived indoors, was allowed on the couch, got fed under the table by the kids ostensibly in secret, and even got to spend the night on the bed when my uncle was working nights.
When my grandmother’s dog had pups, all but one were shot by my cousin. They kept that one as a pet. Of course spay was just not done back then, too expensive. .22 bullets were cheap.
The women in my family were the animal lovers. Even with husbands and brothers that treated dogs and cats like animals.
My father was seemingly indifferent to pets, those were my animals – even when my mother did most of the care when I was very young. It was telling that the only time you saw him pet one of my cats was when he thought he was alone and unobserved. More than once mother would motion me over to the doorway to peek at my dad petting my cat, something he would stop as soon as he heard one of us coming. In his family, that was something that was not done, at least by men.
Gloria DryGarden
My thoughts on this noem thing:
my first thought: If someone delivers a violent consequence, w no warnings, no choices offered, would that be like putting someone straight into jail after 2-3 counts of felony contempt? (So can we do that?)
If someone could choose between making a post asking for help to re-home their dog, or shooting their dog, what does it say about their ability to negotiate or to offer choices and possiblities, if they choose like Ms noem?
What kind of potential vice president would that be?
How would their diplomatic visits turn out, during delicate situations?
My next layer of thinking: I don’t have dogs, and I’m from the city, so I didn’t know about the urban/rural divide, but a friend from Missouri explained it to me yesterday. She said a dog in the country is just part of the livestock, and if they aren’t being useful, you put them down; there are other dogs. It makes sense for city folk to try to accommodate the needs of rural folks, and bridge the rural urban divide, try to meet more people’s needs. I can take in her pov, and I see many here understand it as one way some rural people handle it. And indeed, billy goats can be pretty intense, I know first hand.
But it’s not comfortable.
I can take in this alternate view, and consider it, but weigh it with the other facts: a 14 month dog, still a rambunctious puppy, her kid’s dog – which makes it extra cruel; plus there are so many rescue shelters where an animal could have been rehomed.
it has helped me to read all the comments in this thread, because ms noems sudden violent choice really bothers me.
I think a national leader needs to have options thinking, be flexible, consider possibilities, and be patient and be able to negotiate. It’s clear she doesn’t have any of these qualities.
it’s pretty telling also, that the indigenous people in her state won’t let her set foot on their lands.
im holding back on a whole bunch of mean things I now want to say about her. Need to get my vibration back up.
wjca
The thing is, farmers (and, in my experience, farm kids) mostly don’t have pets. We have chores. Dogs and cats, on a farm, aren’t typically pets, any more than the sheep or pigs or cattle or chickens are. They’re there to do a job. It’s an entirely different mindset.
That said, the casual cruelty of her approach to putting an animal down is disgusting. In the dog’s case, I can see why it needed to be done — once they first kill a chicken, they won’t stop. But there are humane ways to get the job done.
Princess
This is not about rural vs urban. These aren’t the nameless kittens of a nameless barn cat a hundred miles from the nearest vet. This was a named family dog of a woman who could rehome it in an afternoon or get a vet to the governor’s mansion in an hour. This is a GWB brush clearing story, except the story is about shooting dogs.
My grandfather also kept hunting dogs, specifically for pheasants. The idea that you need to keep them locked up and hungry is… something else. They lived in the house, he loved them more than anything, and when one couldn’t be trained, he rehomed it. I can only imagine how families like Mistermix’s treated their own children but we all know there are a lot of Trump voters out there who love cruelty and they had to get that way somehow.
sab
@SiubhanDuinne: These women view each others as competitiors and do not offer helpful advise.
Msb
My father hunted with dogs. He preferred Labrador retrievers and used them for both hunting and family pets. One proved to be a complete failure as a hunting dog; he just stopped taking the dog hunting. That dog also thought he was a lap dog; he’d put the front half of his body on my father’s lap any chance he could. Eventually the dog died of old age.
Rick Wilson tweeted very accurately on Noem’s behavior on the part of hunters.
Gvg
Very late comment, but i think MM is wrong. I have rural relatives. I also have an aunt who trains dogs. Its a lot of work, and that women didn’t get real hunters advice. They know that is not how you train a hunter. They must know she is a fake fool.
Also killing 4the.goat right after.sounds like she got excited by killing the dog and didn’t want to stop. Sick.
Then boasting about it as a good thing
fancycwabs
Everyone tells me I’m not serious when I say it’s gonna be Ivanka.
dlw32
The thing that gets me is that she (allegedly) is telling the story as a sign that she’s strong and willing to do the hard thing.
Shooting an animal isn’t a “hard” thing. The hard thing would have been to put in actual effort to train the animal. Even a coward and point a weapon and pull the trigger. It doesn’t even take that much skill.
wjca
I think it’s slightly different. I think she is trying to be like a suburban (or urban) person’s view of what a tough, independent, etc. rural person is like. Rather like a couple of other people we could name are a poor person’s idea of a rich person, or a not-bright person’s view of what an intelligent person is like.
That is, she’s trying to position herself to a stereotype. Epic fail. But it looks like that was the aim. (Sorry!)
lou
The thing is, she did the shootings in sight of a construction crew. Doesn’t sound like a rural and remote location to me. Nor does someone who has that much plastic surgery seem like a paean to rural ranching.
Bupalos
I think Martin has maybe the healthiest angle to address this fundamentally toxic “story” that has so enraptured social media. “Why is this politician telling this particular story this particular way?” That’s a worthwhile analysis that can reveal some of the particular darkness on the right side of the aisle where they attempt to mine cultural divides, real and imagined.
Of course a lot of folks are taking the least healthy angle to this little media nugget, centering the self-reported event itself, and re-narrating it with their own slant to heighten the potential for dehumanization and partisan radicalization on cultural grounds.
Be assured the media algorithms know you feel you have this NEED to hear and talk about the important issue of the subhumans that drink the blood of puppies. When they serve you up a story like this, maybe take a tick. Think about whether a dissipated and brainless rural-cosplay politician telling a story about putting down a chicken-killing dog is really evidence that the groups of humans you’re writing into this particular story are “monsters” you need to arm yourselves against.
I think we would read the moral implications of this story differently if it was set in rural Poland, or Brazil, or Indonesia. I think we should respect the political legitimacy and humanity of people who don’t share pet culture. I also think Kristi Noem is a really bad post-truth politician, with terrible policies and a messed up moral compass. The dog story is relevant to that as evidence of the kind of story she wants to tell and thus the kind of politician she wants to be. Not the kind of person she is and not (by extension) the kind of people “they all are.”
I find it curious that the actual visceral animal suffering in this story- from the botched slaughter of the goat- gets the least attention. Does that have to do with the goat (every bit as smart and often as affectionate as a dog) is more a food production animal and much closer to the kind of animal we countenance the torture and killing of as a matter of culture and self-interest?
Bupalos
@lou: Pretty sure people build things in the country, but I don’t know what salience this could possibly have anyway.
Gloria DryGarden
https://www.sdstandardnow.com/home/veteran-conservation-officer-noem-clearly-did-not-understand-how-to-prepare-and-train-her-dog-and-it-suffered-because-of-that
Pink Tie
we all knew people like this. our neighbors in Newport News Virginia threw away their dog by driving out to the country and letting it go. and told my parents about it & lied to the kids. i cannot imagine treating any living thing like that.