The report, published by The Guardian, details Noem’s recollection of putting down the dog after she believed it had become too dangerous to have around people and other animals.

The revelations in the article drove many on the left insane with outrage, which is rather ironic considering they aggressively argue in favor of killing human babies in the womb. However, it also raised the ire of many on the right as well.

Let’s face it: Americans love their dogs. I’m no different. But in this situation, much of the context has been lost.

Now, in her upcoming book “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem describes an episode in which she had to shoot a family dog - this one a hunting dog:

In the book, Noem, who has been discussed as a possible running mate for former President Trump, describes growing angry with the nearly 14-month-old “Cricket,” a wirehaired pointer, during a hunting trip.

Noem shot the dog after taking it on a pheasant hunt.

She writes that she had taken Cricket on the hunt hoping she would learn from older dogs, but that instead the younger dog ruined the hunt by “chasing all those birds and having the time of her life,” per the Guardian.

The dog had, as Gov. Noem described it, a behavioral problem, including one episode in which it killed chickens; in many rural areas, a dog that kills stock is subject to a death sentence for that alone:

On the way home, the dog escaped her truck and attacked a local family’s chickens, “grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another,” Noem wrote.

When Noem tried to grab the dog, she wrote that it whipped around to bite her. Noem said she wrote the family a check for their chickens and helped them dispose of the carcasses “littering the scene of the crime.”

“I hated that dog,” she wrote, adding that Cricket was untrainable, dangerous and worthless as a hunting dog.

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

The excerpts shared by The Guardian also note that Noem referred to Cricket as “untrainable” and “dangerous to anyone it came in contact with.”

Other than what The Guardian chose to include in its article, there is no further context surrounding Noem’s decision to put Cricket down. However, it is clear that she believed the dog was dangerous; she did not put the dog down just because it was not a good hunter. As many know, this practice is not uncommon in rural areas. As RedState’s resident Mountain Man Ward Clark laid out:

There isn’t enough detail here to accurately judge Noem’s actions. The dog wasn’t just misbehaving; it had killed stock and threatened to bite. The fact that the dog killed chickens is a big factor; in my own, rural Iowa youth, it was accepted that if a dog attacked stock, it was put down; if a dog bit a child (or, indeed, anyone without cause), it was put down; if a dog was allowed to run loose and ran [after] deer, or sheep, or cattle, it was put down. A dog or dogs can run deer or sheep to death, and at different times my father, my brother, and I all had to shoot dogs that were engaged in running deer.

Moreover, the fact that Noem indicated that the dog was “dangerous” suggests that there were more details about Cricket’s behavior that were either left out by Noem in her book, or left out of The Guardian’s report on her book. If the dog was dangerous to other people or their animals, it would provide a more understandable motivation behind her actions. Of course, even with the context, one could reasonably disagree with what she did.

I discussed the issue in a recent video I posted on X. The responses I have received are quite compelling.

Alright...here are my thoughts on the Kristi Noem dog saga.

Might offend some of y'all, but we have to look at the context...much of which has been left out.

Let me know what you think! pic.twitter.com/3RrgRRTL4Y

— Jeff Charles, An Awful Pundit🏴 (@jeffcharlesjr) April 27, 2024

Some have suggested to me that she could have simply taken it to a shelter. But if the dog was aggressive many shelters would not accept it. Or, if one did, it would end up euthanizing the dog anyway. While some can train the aggression out of their animals or place them with someone else who can, this is not possible for everyone who has been in this position.

Indeed, a good friend of mine had this same problem last year. He had been bitten by his dog numerous times and could never have company over because it was far too unpredictable. Eventually, he had to have the animal euthanized.

To be fair, others who may have lived in similar areas as Ward might not have gone about it in this fashion. But in the end, dogs are property, not human beings, and people have the right to do with them what they believe is necessary.

In the end, reasonable people can disagree on what Noem should have done. But the effort to paint her as a dog-murdering demon is over the top. Many families have faced this situation, and regardless of which direction they choose, it is a tough decision to make.

It is also worth noting that including this in her book was probably the dumbest political move Noem could have made. It should have been easy to predict the outpouring of outrage that would inevitably materialize after this section was made public. She was seen as a prime contender to be Trump’s running mate. Now, she has damaged her chances of being elevated to this level.

However, it is still too early to count her out. As we all know, America’s attention span isn’t exactly lengthy. It is possible that by the time Trump makes his decision, most of the furor will have died down as the nation moves on to the next outrage.