Kristi Noem Reveals She Fatally Shot Her Dog: 'Had To Be Done'

Kristi Noem has revealed that she shot her dog Cricket after realizing it was "untrainable."

Writing in her new book, No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, the South Dakota governor described how she shot and killed her animal, according to British newspaper The Guardian.

Newsweek has not obtained a copy of the book and has been unable to verify the reported passage.

Newsweek contacted Noem's office by email to comment on this story.

The Context

Noem, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, is widely speculated to be a potential vice president pick for him. Trump previously indicated that the Republican governor was a possible choice in an interview with Fox News on February 20. He said Noem and six others were being considered as his potential running mate.

What We Know

Noem shot the dog after leading it to a gravel pit after it killed a family's chickens.

"Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old," Noem reportedly wrote, adding that the dog, a female, had an "aggressive personality" and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

She wrote that she took Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs to calm the animal and help it learn how to behave. But on the hunt, Cricket went "out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life."

Noem then used an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control, she wrote, but that didn't work. Then on the way home, Cricket escaped Noem's truck and attacked the family's chickens, "grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another." This made the chickens' owner cry and Noem financially renumerated them and helped them clean the mess the dog had made.

"At that moment," Noem said, "I realized I had to put her down."

"It was not a pleasant job," she writes, "but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done."

Views

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Glyn Moody, a London-based technology writer, called Noem "an utterly callous and despicable woman."

What's Next?

Noem's book will be published in the U.S. in May.

Update 4/26/24, 7:42 a.m. ET: This story was updated with additional information.