I’m fascinated by the political calculation of her sharing this anecdote. Obviously, she must have known that this would be incendiary. But she’s writing this book for an audience of one. She knows Trump dislikes dogs and thinks women are weak, so maybe this was her way of showing him that she was tough enough to hang with the boys.
But Trump, whatever else you may say about him, probably recognizes that shooting a puppy in the head is a political liability.
But did she, though? I mean, I would have thought Mitt Romney would have figured out the same thing, and look what happened there. I think some of these people really are just so dysfunctional that they think stories like this are no big thing. She’s probably sitting at home, seeing all this negative press, and wondering why people are so upset at her “just shooting a dog.”
I mean, he was a bad hunting dog and couldn’t handle being around chickens. There’s nothing else a dog can do, so she was just doing him a favor.
So… she wants to use this animal as a hunting dog, then shoots it because it’s chasing and attacking chickens? Um… that’s hunting behavior. You know, what she wants from the dog, just not when and where she wants it.
The dog needed training, not a bullet.
Also - “escaped” from the truck? What, you don’t know how to secure your animal?
An adult male goat that smells “disgusting, musky, rancid” and is chasing and knocking down people? You mean a goat that is acting like an adult male goat?
WTF is wrong with this woman?
Careful with the assumptions - would not surprise me if she’s wondering why everyone is making such a fuss.
All publicity is…
Later you can take something your opponent says about you out of context and claim you are persecuted.
When your voters live in an absolute bubble “owning the libs” becomes a reality on its own.
I think this is it. Some people are so cluelessly contained within their bubble, it doesn’t even occur to them that something so “normal” would get such a reaction. “It was just a dog! And I couldn’t stand him. What would you do?”
My (now ex) wife took me to visit her aunt and uncle who lived on a farm. I was astonished that, to them, dogs were just a thing on the farm. They were not beloved pets (the dogs were never let in the house…a thing they would consider weird). While they saw them as useful(ish) they didn’t care much for them beyond basic upkeep. If they died…ah well. Get another. So many of their dogs had been hit by cars that the joked, while I was there, they’d name their next dog “Speed Bump.”
A completely different view of the animal from those of us who cherish our pets.
This is the reaction among some on the right wing message board that I occasionally look in at. “Meh, the dog is a problem, just shoot it.” A cold and cruel assessment, by my standards, and all I could think of when I read about this was “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Well, all Kristi Noem had was a gun, and the dog looked like a nail, so …
Fercryingoutloud, Kristi, why didn’t you just give up the dog to a shelter that might give it a chance to live? Or a veterinarian for humane euthanasia? Too much work? A bullet costs less than a vet visit?
There’s a special circle of Hell reserved for you Kristi. And your guns won’t help you there.
I know for sure there are “tough guys” like that out there. But my gut tells me that even in MAGA world, on the whole, shooting a puppy in the face with a shotgun doesn’t give them a warm-and-fuzzy.
For some, it does.
R.I.P. Cricket
I grew up out in rural New Zealand, where a dog that ‘worries’ sheep is automatically marked for termination, though it’s usually done officially through Animal Control. However, chickens are not sheep.
The cruelty of Neom’s animal’s dispatch is not, AFAIK, the behavior of a normal farmer.
So it did occur to me, that maybe that’s the point. The main attribute trump is looking for in a VP (right after “must be willing to betray their oath of office to help me become a dictator”) is someone who must be in no way be viewed as a potential replacement or successor. His ego would never allow that. And this very much prevents any talk that she might be a successor or replacement president. Even the GOP base is not going to consider nominating a presidential candidate whose main claim to fame is they murdered a puppy, but a VP candidate who cares?
Maybe that’s overthinking it, the obvious explanation is she’s a complete psychopath who didn’t realize every single non-psychotic person reading that story would be utterly horrified by it, regardless of politics,
Enjoy the outrage while it lasts 'cause I’m certain the conservative/Republican response to rehabilitate this is going to be ‘A dog? Liberals murder children!’
We had a neighbor like that. She’d leave the house to go to work at 7am, chained the dog up outside, would go to her boyfriend’s house after work and would not get home until around 11pm when she would finally bring the dog in. The dog barked constantly. When she noticed that we would lean over the fence to try to give the dog some much needed attention, she put one of those electric wire things around the perimeter of the yard to keep the dog away from the fence. We tried calling the police and humane society multiple times, but they said since the dog had food and water and a doghouse they couldn’t consider it abused or abandoned and couldn’t do anything about it.
Fuck people who don’t know how to take care of a pet. 
Yeah I’d say a farmer would be more concerned about that story of killing the goat than a regular city dweller who thinks meat comes in patty form.
Just because farmers have different attitudes to animals (as @Whack-a-Mole that includes working dogs) does not mean they go around killing goats in the most painful manner just because they are smelly and mean.
I’ve heard her interviews. I ain’t got enough time this weekend to make a list.
Dog gestation periods are about 9 weeks. Kristi just feels the abortion time for dogs should be up to 72 weeks. See, she’s really pro-(canine)-choice.
And it’s not just the cruelty of the method, but also the attitude she had. She “hated” the dog, it was a “problem” she had to solve.
I don’t doubt the average farmer would regard dispatching an animal in a more business-like manner than your average non-farmer, but I suspect said farmer wouldn’t talk about how much they hated the dog before they shot it, either.
ETA: I’m reminded of the parts of the Chernobyl miniseries focusing on the men tasked with killing every animal in the exclusion zone. They knew it was something that needed to be done, but they still did it in as compassionate a manner as possible, and felt like shit about it anyways.