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.
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*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.
A Couple of Thoughts on Kristi and Her PetsPost + Comments (81)