cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/20120801
The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.
On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor.
“At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her.
She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state.
But even then, there are other options to consider first before killing, even more deciding it on your own
Behavioral euthanasia is a thing. If you think that she just got the dog, it was all fine and dandy, and then one day it killed a chicken, bit a dude but was otherwise a well behaved good dog, then you are naive. She most likely saw the writing on the wall earlier, worked with the dog (since it was meant to be a working, hunting dog), till the dog went too far and had to be put down. An article reduces all sort of things to a simple “politician bad”, calling to emotion. The truth of the matter is she probably knows her shit more than any of us here, you don’t get a working dog for the fun of it, as a pet, without knowing anything about them or how to train them. Some dogs can “come back” from aggression, some don’t.
See Gold Shaw Farm on youtube, he has two working dogs. One, Toby, is very behaved, guarding the flock, not showing signs of aggression. The second dog he got later is Abby, which is an overexcited, dangerous to the animals dog. He trained both, in fact Abby came later, so he didn’t make the mistakes he did with Toby. Yet Abby, after years of training, still shows aggression sometimes and needs to be reeled in. Abby has killed his chickens in the past. Luckily with her, she mostly targetted white chickens, not people or the entire flock, and she has a “paragon of virtue” in Toby, who also sometimes gets her to stop. Yet the owner spayed her, despite wanting to breed farm dogs, because he knew her behavior will probably end up in the puppies.
Now imagine what would happen, if Abby was so dangerous, she would bite people, kill chickens, ducks or geese. She would be out of there in a heartbeat. You simply can’t have a working dog that does that. Same with the “failed drug sniffers” where dogs are too excited to work with humans correctly, or have other undesirable traits. They get adopted out of service at best, and if incredibly aggressive and dangerous to people, they get put down.
The linked Guardian has the longer version. Training wasn’t going well, but she made a spur of the moment decision that training was done. No rethinking said training. No spaying to keep the traits out of the bloodline. No deciding if a different role in the household would be appropriate. No rehoming the dog to one without birds. No rescue or even a county shelter. Not even a sober discussion with her kids to let them say goodbye and then a humane euthanasia.
No, the dog embarrassed her and cost her money, so she shot it. Then, she was in a killin’ mood, so the goat had to go too, apparently the same day. And she did a bad job with that one so it sat there with a gunshot wound until she could get to the truck and back, and there were other people in sight, so it was all safe and well thought out (/s).
Then she brags about it like it was a good thing. I will stand by it: people in rural areas and in agriculture have to have a different relationship with mammalian life and death and have to make tough calls, but this shithead is just cruel.
After the dog bit her and killed animals. I won’t repeat myself, since I said everything and yet you don’t read it. You say that people in agriculture / rural areas treat dogs differently (which again, is not a distinction between rural and urban, it is a distinction between working dogs and pets). Yet you still want this to be about “cruel monster shoots dog cause she wants to kill”.
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Boo hoo, reality hurts and that poor puppy. I’d love to live in such a bubble as you do.