Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Friday defended a story included in her forthcoming biography in which she describes killing a family dog on their farm, to her daughter’s distress — a grisly anecdote that instantly drew criticism from a number of political opponents.
Ms. Noem, a Republican who is widely seen as a contender to be former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate, shared details about shooting the 14-month-old dog, a female wirehaired pointer named Cricket, and an unnamed goat, according to excerpts first reported by The Guardian.
An avid hunter, Ms. Noem wrote that she had hoped to train Cricket to hunt pheasant, but that she proved “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless” as a hunting dog. “I hated that dog,” Ms. Noem wrote, according to The Guardian.
It was after Cricket ruined a hunting trip, killed another family’s chickens and bit the governor that Ms. Noem recalled deciding to kill the dog; she shot Cricket in a gravel pit.
That was not the only blood Ms. Noem drew that day: She also shot a male goat that she called “nasty and mean.” Shot him twice, in fact: The goat jumped as she shot him the first time, according to The Guardian’s recounting of the book, so she fetched another shell and shot him again.
The whole ordeal was reportedly witnessed by a construction crew nearby. Ms. Noem wrote that as the workers returned to their jobs, a school bus came by to drop off her children.
Her daughter, Kennedy, Ms. Noem wrote, “looked around confused” and asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”
“I guess if I were a better politician, I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Ms. Noem wrote in the book, set to be published by Center Street on May 7. But she framed the day’s events as reflecting her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly,” whether that be in farm ownership or in politics.
The story drew condemnation on Friday from a swath of the political world, mainly to Ms. Noem’s left, including some anti-Trump Republicans and a number of Democrats. President Biden’s re-election campaign wrote on X that “Trump VP contender Kristi Noem brags about shooting her 14-month-old puppy to death.” And the Democratic National Committee issued a statement describing the passages as “disturbing and horrifying.”
Ms. Noem seized on The Guardian’s article to underscore her rural-America bona fides, promote her book and mock the news media. “We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm,” she wrote Friday on X, adding that her family recently had to “put down” three horses.
She added that her book would contain “more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping.”
Ms. Noem, who appeared with Mr. Trump at an event in Ohio last month, is one of several Republicans regularly mentioned as potential vice-presidential picks. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, she tied with Vivek Ramaswamy for first place in a poll of whom attendees wanted to see Mr. Trump select as a running mate.
She has routinely praised the former president and recently took part in an ad promoting her cosmetic dental work that some saw as a move to catch Mr. Trump’s attention, even as it drew legal scrutiny. In recent days, she has refused to say whether she would have certified the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, and dodged questions on whether she supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape or incest.