I don’t write headlines, or epitaphs, for a living. Too short. (They, not I.) Still, were I to attempt one of either (or perhaps both) over the ghastly matter of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s shooting of the fourteen-month old Cricket two decades ago, that would be it.
For those not in the know, Noem has been, for some time, one of the leading candidates, at least as perceived by the public, for selection by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump as his Vice-Presidential running mate. She’d received mostly favorable press for her state’s handling of Covid, she’s relatively young (52), she’s a mother, a grandmother, a rancher, has an interesting life story, and she was considered an attractive and appealing option who’d shore up a chunk of the female vote Trump has lost along the way and bring it home.
Some of the gloss rubbed off her–at least as far as MAGA voters were concerned, during the last year of her gubernatorial tenure when her decisions on social issues, particularly those affecting women–academically, financially, athletically–seemed largely to consist of equivocations and ‘caving’ to contemporary fads and enthusiasms. For many, though, this just increased her salability for a spot on the ticket with Trump.
True, there were some bumps along the way. Loud and inconvenient rumors of an affair, several years ago with Trump campaign aide Corey Lewandowski. (They’re both still married, but not to each other.) A couple of “ethics board” investigations into conflicts of interest and improper use of state funds. And most recently, a hullabaloo over an advertisement for Smile Texas, an outfit that had given Noem’s teeth a do-over, in which she appears, and for which she’s being sued for not disclosing her (presumably financial) relationship with the company.
As is often the case in these United States, especially in the months leading up to a presidential election, when speculation as to who’ll be on the ticket reaches the highest levels, Noem’s been making the rounds and engaging in the shameless self-promotion that all politicians who are hell-bent on furthering their national ambitions do.
The centerpiece of her campaign was to be her ghost-written “autobiography,” No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Center Street, May 2024. Although it’s garnered Noem a great deal of publicity, much of it hasn’t been of a positive nature, such as the exploding of her claim to have met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un:
When I became aware [that the Kim Jong Un story was in the book] we changed the content, and the future editions will be adjusted….
Oh, Honey. You posted clips to your Twitter account in March, showing yourself reading aloud your own book for the audiobook edition. Reading the text and speaking the words didn’t register, and you had to wait until it was published two months later for third parties to “bring the story to your attention” so it could be removed? Glory be.
And then there is Cricket (the following citations are taken from Noem’s book). Those of you who are expecting a pearl-clutching, horror-filled diatribe about mean rural people and poor fur babies are doomed to disappointment. I’m a countrywoman myself, and I understand the (sometimes unpleasant) exigencies of rural life.
What’s most interesting to me is not the story of the unfortunate dog.
It’s the story of the woman:
Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about fourteen months old, and she had come to us from a home that struggled with her aggressive personality. I was sure she’d learn a lot going out with our older dogs that day. I was wrong.
Gun dogs, or bird dogs such as Cricket (a German Wire-Haired Pointer) require a huge amount of training and reinforcement, starting at a very young age and continuing all their lives. “I was sure she’d learn a lot going out with our older dogs that day,” isn’t how a person trains such a dog. Not even close. (I do wonder what this says about Noem’s ideas on child rearing. Did she remove her toddler’s diaper one day, dress her in a Little (very little) Black Dress, and drop her off at a cocktail party so she could observe her elders and see what they did when they needed to pee? Voila! Successful potty training! Good grief. What a dolt.)
But at least there’s some sort of first–and I believe last–acknowledgment of fault on her own part, one which doesn’t seem to have made it into any subsequent discussion of the matter. She was wrong. She had no control over this dog, and thinking that Cricket would “learn a lot’” by going out with other trained dogs was wrong. Not to mention that–in the opinion of dog handlers and professional dog trainers–putting a dog with questionable credentials to the test in this way is the height of idiocy and irresponsibility, and just asking for trouble. This is the first time she sets Cricket up to fail.
Within an hour of walking the first field, Cricket had blown past the group, gotten too far ahead, and flushed up birds out of range. She was out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life. The only problem was there were no hunters nearby to shoot the birds she scared up.
OK, so Cricket was actually doing the right thing, flushing out birds. Not her fault there weren’t hunters around to shoot them. Or beaters, or bounders, or whatever the hell they are called, to bring her to heel and teach her the boundaries.
So, in the absence of any sort of any such controlling factors, the young, overexcited, Cricket lost it. (Where were you while all this was going on, BTW?)
I called her back to no avail. I hit her electronic collar to give her a quick tone to remind her to listen. I then hit the button to give her a warning vibration that told her to come back to me. No response. We all watched helplessly as dozens and dozens of pheasants exploded from the grass and flew out of sight. The hunt was ruined. I was livid. (Emphasis mine.)
K. I am by no means an expert on bird shoots, but if the significant outcome of this one was that “dozens and dozens of pheasants exploded from the grass and flew out of sight,” then that doesn’t sound (at least in existential, long-lasting terms) like a particularly catastrophic outcome.
Unless a person becomes enraged by it.
After gathering up the dogs and paraphernalia after the shoot gone wrong, we come Noem’s next decision point:
As I loaded the dogs and supplies, I realized I was one kennel short. No matter. I would just let Cricket ride loose in the back end of the truck on the way home. If she was dumb enough to jump out, then good riddance. After what she had pulled that day, I didn’t care. (Emphasis mine.)
I do realize I emphasized the whole outtake. That’s because it does, in its entirety, demonstrate such stupidity, irresponsibility, and unhinged thinking it beggars belief. Keep in mind–if Noem had to leave one dog loose in the back of the truck–she appears to have had other, mature, fully-trained, non-excitable bird dogs to choose from. And–if she’d been thinking clearly and not apparently in the grip of some fugue state–she could have confined Cricket in the cab.
Noem then starts to drive home, stopping along the way to speak to neighbors who–she says–had purchased a dog from the family.
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Cricket launching herself out of the back end of the pickup truck and racing across the yard. As I swung around to see what she was after, my stomach dropped. Chickens.
Yeah. You left an overexcited young dog loose in the back of your pickup truck and then you drove the truck, and the dog, to what sounds like a free-range chicken farm. To this point, whenever I’ve been criticizing you for allowing the dog to escape, I’ve done you the courtesy of describing your action here as “failed to adequately restrain…”
But. No. You left her loose, not even bothering to tie her up, saying you didn’t care what she subsequently did. I can’t think of a single person out here where I live who, in a fit of rage, would throw his misbehaving dog, untethered, into the back of his pickup and drive around hoping that the dog would jump out, run off, and become someone else’s “farm” problem. That’s just unforgivable. And very telling. This is the second time she sets Cricket up to fail.
It’s really not possible to live in farm country for more than five minutes (I’ve been here for forty years) without learning what I call The First Rural Rule of Animal Husbandry. It is, “Curb Your Dog.” People on farms and ranches have a very low tolerance for ill-behaved and untrained dogs running amok, and a very high recognition of their responsibility to keep their canine friends–and sometime employees–under control at all times.
Eventually I got my hand on her collar, and she whipped around to bite me. Shocked, I dragged her back to my pickup and threw her inside the cab. I took my checkbook out, grabbed a pen, slammed the door, and faced the music.
“Shocked?” Really?? Kristi, for a farm girl, you’re strangely ignorant of the natural world. Putting Cricket inside the cab was your first good idea. But way too late.
When I got back into my truck, Cricket was sitting in the passenger seat, looking like she just won the lottery. The picture of pure joy. I hated that dog. (Emphasis mine.)
Noem then describes how she took Cricket to the gravel pit, “led” her in (it all depends on what the meaning of “led” is) and shot her.
But wait. There’s more:
She then turned her thoughts to the Billy goat:
He was nasty and mean, as most male goats are that are left uncastrated.
They can be. And smelly. And aggressive. In fact, if you’re not breeding goats, and if you’re at all put off by any of the foregoing indicators, you probably should have your goat castrated while he’s still “Billy the Kid.” But (in the absence of any clue that the family was involved in any goat breeding program), Noem says this intact goat had been a problem around the ranch “for years.” (“Whose fault is that?” I hear myself asking. I could say something here about “setting the goat up to fail,” but never mind. Hopefully, that point has already been made.)
I went down to the corral, caught the goat, and dragged him out to the gravel pit. I tied him to a post.
Convenient. Do all gravel pits have posts–presumably down at the bottom of them–in place for the purpose? Must check.
But when I went to shoot him, he jumped at the last second. My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job. Problem was, I didn’t have one. Not wanting him to suffer, I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.
End of “Billy.” Rest in Peace.
Noem then describes the “shocked amazement” on the faces of a nearby group of construction workers she says were building the family’s “new home,” and who’d witnessed and/or heard both shootings. And the appearance of the school bus, from which her children descended, and the first words of her daughter–“Hey, where’s Cricket?”
Then:
Later that evening, my uncle, who was the general contractor building our house, called me and said, “What got into you today?” “Nothing,” I responded. “Why?” “Well, the guys said you came barreling into the yard with your truck, slammed the door, and took a gun and a dog over the hill, out of sight. They heard one shot and you came back without the dog. Then you grabbed the goat and headed back up over the hill. They heard another shot, you came back, slammed the pickup door, went back. Then they heard another shot and then you came back without the goat. They said they hurried back to work before you decided they were next!”
I guess Noem thinks this excerpt makes her look tough: The woman who’ll do the dirty work when it needs to be done. Otherwise, God knows why she included it.
I’ve described the killings of the dog and the goat elsewhere as having arisen from a woman in the grip of a rage. Until now, I’ve done so on the basis of limited–but to my mind compelling–evidence, and on my own experience with rural matters and some alarm bells that were set off in the truncated telling of Noem’s tale in places like The Guardian and others who’d obtained a pre-publication copy of the book for early review.
Now I’ve read “the rest of the story,” recounted in Noem’s (or her ghostwriter’s) own words.
And I’m more sure than ever I have been correct all along.
- She took a young, excitable, untrained dog, over which she had no control, on a pheasant hunt. Strike one.
- Immediately following the pheasant hunt, on the way home, she failed to restrain the still-excited dog inside her own truck, saying she didn’t care if Cricket jumped out and ran away, or what Cricket did. Cricket subsequently escaped and went after a neighbor’s chickens. Strike two.
- She shot the dog, and then the goat, while in a rage (“I hated that dog”) and now she’s bragging about it, and adjusting her recollections to try to get herself out of a difficult situation which hasn’t gone as she had hoped. Strike three.
Hopefully, she’s out.
This woman shouldn’t be anywhere near the levers of power, from the White House all the way down to the County Fair.
That she seems to have scuppered her chances, at least for the first, is one of the fortuitous outcomes of her train wreck of a story, and one of the reasons it’s a good thing it’s been well covered and discussed as it has. I’m very sorry for the dog, and the goat. But what the story reveals about the “woman in charge” is the most interesting and important part of it.
There’s no remorse. No second guessing. Nothing in the story about, “I wish I’d tied her up, or put her in the cab.” No, “If I had to do it over again, I’d do something different.” No, “I’m the one who put those chickens at risk by leaving an overexcited young dog unrestrained in the back of my truck.” No teachable moment. Nothing.
Just set the dog up to fail, and, and when–as a result of your own deliberate actions–she does, just shoot her.
Watch your back, people.
This is the story of a woman who (by all accounts in her early thirties at the time, and a wife and a mother), behaved badly and acted rashly, who learned nothing, and who’s so tone-deaf and tin-eared that she thinks telling the story the way she has will accrue to her benefit in 2024.
She seems to revel in it. She must think it makes her look really good. She goes back to it, almost at the end of the book, where she says the “first thing” she’d do if she ever moved into the White House (that’s a hard “no,” Kristi) is “make sure Joe Biden’s dog was nowhere on the grounds (‘Commander, say hello to Cricket for me.’)”
Har. Har.
Woof.
PS: I’m totally willing to believe she made the whole thing up from start to finish. Because it’s baffling to me that any sane woman would tell a story which, if it’s true, accrues so far to her detriment. God knows why, though, you’d make such a thing up, unless you’ve completely lost the plot. That bridge has yet to be crossed. I expect, at some point, witnesses will start to crawl out of the woodwork on one side or the other, and then we’ll see.
Wire-Haired Pointer (Purina Ad)
Billy Goat, from The South Dakota Cowgirl
Before I rest my case here, I’ll simply add that nowhere, in the multi-page detailed recounting of the events in the book, does Noem mention “training” for Cricket, or that Noem had been training her for “months and months,” or that Cricket was attacking and endangering Noem’s children, her family, or their livestock. It’s fairly clear in the book that Cricket’s snapping at Noem during the chicken-killing incident may have been the first time Cricket ever tried to bite anyone. There’s no mention in the book of Cricket attacking or killing any other livestock, or even of her killing the pheasants on the shoot. And yet Noem has added all these details and more, and continues to embroider and embellish the story, which keeps changing direction and which grows like Topsy–probably dozens of times by now, in print or onscreen–in order to try to emerge with some dignity and integrity from an escapade that, at the time it happened, and in the recounting a couple of decades later, shows she has none of either.
Now, I do rest my case. Take it wherever you like.
This seem apropos:
Omigosh. Perfect.