The South Dakota governor has faced bipartisan backlash over an excerpt from her new book that she put down her dog Cricket.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was confronted with Republican criticism about her account of fatally shooting her dog in her upcoming book during an interview on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday.
Noem, a Republican who has been floated as a possible vice presidential nominee for former President Donald Trump ahead of this year’s presidential election, drew bipartisan backlash over an excerpt that was published late last month by the British newspaper The Guardian about her dog, Cricket, in her new book No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.
In the excerpt, the governor shared an account of shooting the 14-month-old puppy, which she wrote had an « aggressive personality. »
On the way home from the trip, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked a family’s chickens, « grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another. » This made the chickens’ owner cry and Noem paid them while also helping clean the mess the dog had made. She added that when she grabbed Cricket, the dog « whipped around to bite me. »
« At that moment, » Noem wrote, « I realized I had to put her down. »
The governor also wrote that she « hated that dog, » describing it as « untrainable » and « dangerous to anyone she came in contact with. »
The excerpt drew widespread condemnation, with many Republican critics arguing that Noem should not have shot the dog, but instead could have trained it or rehomed it.
