Kristi Noem and the Dog

[Ben]

Anybody been following this Kristi Noem thing? BLUF: Terrible idea by her and her team.

I mean, I get the "this is how rural folks live" thing. I think we've even had past members here talk about shooting their dog, but like when it had a terminal illness or something, and I know that some here would shoot a dog being aggressive towards them (she shot the dog because it was aggressive/"untrainable", not during an immediate threat).

Though I'm one of the "dogs are better than people" people here, I understand why someone might shoot a loose dog that was an immediate threat to them. I even kinda get why someone rural might do what Noem did. After all, cops will shoot an "aggressive" dog. Animal Control will confiscate an "aggressive" dog from you and kill it. I think Noem's point was that she was doing the rural equivalent of what cops or local government would do in the city. A bunch of my neighbors talk about shooting stray dogs (because "cattle country"), which always has me worried about keeping Steve within his own AO. It's something I could never do. I've had stray dogs wander on the property, and I've just let them pass. Even if one came on and started going at my cow guy's cows, I'd just go out in the field and chase him off. That's just me.

Regardless, who the heck told her that making this a main point of her book/book tour was a good idea? This is an easy room to read. The vast, vast majority of Americans love dogs, and whether their position is right or wrong on it, they think that someone shooting their own dog is abhorrent. That's simply current culture. She is super upset about everyone jumping down her throat on it, but I'm not sure what else she expected. I posted in politics because this seems to be a major political blunder to her career.

[Boomhauer]

She’s a *expletive deleted*ing idiot and disgusts me.

[WLJ]

Yeah I've been scratching my head on this too

[RocketMan]

My default position is that there are no bad dogs, just bad dog owners.  But when I think about it a bit, we know there are some truly evil people living among us, broken people that have nothing good in their hearts at all.  I suppose a very small number of dogs could be that way, too.  Maybe.  And you'd have to work real hard to prove it to me.
Regardless, truly bad optics for Noem.  A dumbass thing to highlight in her biography.  Way to torpedo your political career, lady.

[cordex]

I haven't paid much attention to her and don't know anything about her.

I love my dog, don't get worked up when someone else's dog comes on our land, and have never had to kill one.

That said, killing an aggressive animal isn't at all unusual, and killing an animal that has killed someone else's livestock is perfectly normal.  Yes, the ultimate fault is almost certainly the owner's, but that doesn't mean that you can always rainbow and unicorn your way out of it.  I've certainly known of farmers killing their own dogs for less. 

And as you point out, a hell of a lot of perfectly healthy dogs get killed every day by animal shelters.

So while it probably wasn't advisable to brag about that side of rural life, I don't find anything about her killing a dog that killed someone else's livestock or culling a goat to be at all shocking.

[BobR]

I haven't paid much attention to her and don't know anything about her...

So while it probably wasn't advisable to brag about that side of rural life, I don't find anything about her killing a dog that killed someone else's livestock or culling a goat to be at all shocking.

This is probably more of a "write to you audience" moment that was overlooked.Her editor or someone should have known that once the city folk at the major (and minor) networks got hold of the book they would zero in on that because the concept is so foreign to them.

I have been known to lie in wait at a friends farm because there was a pack of formerly domestic dogs that had packed up and would go out at night and kill livestock. I never saw them but someone else did and the problem was largely eliminated. I still carry a scar along the length of my index finger from a Springer I had. If I thought he had bit me on purpose I would have shot him right there but as it was I think he was startled and dragged his canine down the length of my finger. Good thing, we bred him with a Brittany and those turned out to be the best bird dogs ever!

bob

[cordex]

This is probably more of a "write to you audience" moment that was overlooked.  Her editor or someone should have known that once the city folk at the major (and minor) networks got hold of the book they would zero in on that because the concept is so foreign to them.

Absolutely.

I still carry a scar along the length of my index finger from a Springer I had.

Me too, sort of.  I've got one on the side of my right trigger finger that I got from a young German shepherd in training to become a cop dog.  She saw me walking toward the guy who she was staying with and nipped at me - I guess to protect him.  She ended up washing out and became another cop's pet and apparently is very sweet.

It must have damaged some nerves because I largely lost feeling in the side of my finger for a long time.  Years later I can still feel the nerves spark if I push on the scar.

[Ben]

I'm thinking she was going for the, equivalent of "take responsibility for the food that keeps you alive and kill it yourself so you understand where your steak comes from", and tried to apply it to handling the problem dog. That is, instead of someone else doing your dirty work, doling it yourself, and that was supposed to show her as being able to make the really tough decisions.

Again though, not the right move in a country that's dog crazy. I'm guessing that at most, 10% of her audience understands the "rural life" thing she was promoting. Even people who are rural. I just look at myself. I am absolutely down with killing my own food and the philosophy behind it, but I can't equate that with dog killing. She might have been better off using the  "We had to kill our own food" analogy, as that's actually something a whole lot of people can get behind or at least understand. Even liberals, who are a big part of the homesteading movement.

[dogmush]

When I had a dog team and a whole kennel I had to put down a dog that was untrainable and taken had taken to killing the neighbor's livestock.  We had been this dog's last chance because she had been such a problem in other homes, and unfortunately we couldn't get her to stop being aggressive and killing stuff when she escaped, and she was an escape artist.  She was a very small runt, and honestly touched in the head a bit due to lack of food when *very * young, and maybe in the womb.  It was sad, as we really did our best to give her a home and life, but in the end you can't have a dog that kills other peoples animals.


And we took her to the vet and did it as humanely as possible, we sure as *expletive deleted*ck didn't shoot her in a gravel pit like a Mafia snitch.

And I don't tell the story as an "Oh well, this happens on the farm".  It's a "We tried out best and failed this dog" story, and I think that the difference in tone and attitude, more than anything else, is what has set so many off against Noem.

That said, if she decided she wanted to retire from politics, and not worry about people coming to find her in 2028 or 2032 when the next national Cluster *expletive deleted*ck kicks off: Mission Accomplished.