In Her Own Words: (I Read it All, So You Don’t Have To)

With commentary:

Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about fourteen months old, and she had come to us from a home that struggled with her aggressive personality. I was sure she’d learn a lot going out with our older dogs that day. I was wrong.

Well, at least there's some sort of first--and I believe last--acknowledgment of fault on her own part, one which doesn't seem to have made it into any subsequent discussion of the matter. She was wrong. She had no control over this dog, and the thought that Cricket would "learn a lot'" by going out with other trained dogs was wrong. (Not to mention that--in the opinion of dog handlers and professional dog trainers--putting a dog with questionable credentials to the test in this way is the height of idiocy and irresponsibility.)

Within an hour of walking the first field, Cricket had blown past the group, gotten too far ahead, and flushed up birds out of range. She was out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life. The only problem was there were no hunters nearby to shoot the birds she scared up.

OK, so Cricket was actually doing the right thing, flushing out birds. Not her fault there weren't hunters around to shoot them. Or beaters, or bounders, or whatever the hell they are called, to bring her to heel and teach her the boundaries.

Amirite? So, in the absence of any sort of any such controlling factors, the young Cricket lost it. (Where were you while all this was going on, BTW?)

I called her back to no avail. I hit her electronic collar to give her a quick tone to remind her to listen. I then hit the button to give her a warning vibration that told her to come back to me. No response. We all watched helplessly as dozens and dozens of pheasants exploded from the grass and flew out of sight. The hunt was ruined. I was livid. (Emphasis mine.)

K. I am by no means an expert on bird shoots, but if the significant outcome of this one was that "dozens and dozens of pheasants exploded from the grass and flew out of sight," then that doesn't sound (at least in existential, long-lasting terms) like a particularly catastrophic outcome.

Unless a person becomes enraged by it.

After gathering up the dogs and paraphernalia after the shoot gone wrong, we come to:

As I loaded the dogs and supplies, I realized I was one kennel short. No matter. I would just let Cricket ride loose in the back end of the truck on the way home. If she was dumb enough to jump out, then good riddance. After what she had pulled that day, I didn’t care. (Emphasis mine.)

Yeah. I do realize I emphasized the whole outtake. That's because it does, in its entirety, demonstrate such stupidity, irresponsibility, and unhinged thinking it beggars belief. Keep in mind--if Noem had to leave one dog loose in the back of the truck--she appears to have had other, mature, fully-trained, non-excitable bird dogs to choose from. And--if she'd been thinking clearly and not apparently in the grip of some fugue state--there was always the cab....

Noem then starts to drive home, stopping along the way to speak to neighbors who--she says--purchased a dog from the family.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Cricket launching herself out of the back end of the pickup truck and racing across the yard. As I swung around to see what she was after, my stomach dropped. Chickens.

Yeah. You left an overexcited young dog loose in the back of your pickup truck. To this point, I've been doing you the courtesy of describing your action here as "failed to adequately restrain..."

But. No. You left her loose, not even bothering to tie her up, saying you didn't care what she subsequently did. Once again, so stupid and irresponsible as to beggar belief.

Eventually I got my hand on her collar, and she whipped around to bite me. Shocked, I dragged her back to my pickup and threw her inside the cab. I took my checkbook out, grabbed a pen, slammed the door, and faced the music.

"Shocked?" Really?? Kristi, for a farm girl, you're strangely ignorant of the natural world. Putting Cricket inside the cab was your first good idea. But way too late.

When I got back into my truck, Cricket was sitting in the passenger seat, looking like she just won the lottery. The picture of pure joy. I hated that dog. (Emphasis mine.)

To be clear I'm quoting Noem explicitly at this moment and in the situational continuum, for the benefit of any single one of you who might think that the "hatred" emotion she expresses in the immediate situation (as described by Noem here) might have anything to do with her subsequent actions. Hope that's clear,)

Noem then describes how she took Cricket to the gravel pit, "led" her in (it all depends on what the meaning of "led" is) and shot her. She then turned her thoughts to the (as yet) unnamed Billy goat:

He was nasty and mean, as most male goats are that are left uncastrated.

They can be. And smelly. And aggressive. In fact, if you're not breeding goats, and if you're at all put off by any of the foregoing indicators, you probably should have your goat castrated while he's still "Billy the Kid." But (in the absence of any clue that the family was involved in any goat breeding program), Noem says this intact goat had been a problem around the ranch "for years." ("Whose fault is that?" I hear myself asking.)

I went down to the corral, caught the goat, and dragged him out to the gravel pit. I tied him to a post.

Convenient. Do all gravel pits have posts--presumably down at the bottom of them--in place for the purpose? Must check.

But when I went to shoot him, he jumped at the last second. My shot was off and I needed one more shell to finish the job. Problem was, I didn’t have one. Not wanting him to suffer, I hustled back across the pasture to the pickup, grabbed another shell, hurried back to the gravel pit, and put him down.

End of "Billy." Rest in Peace.

Noem then describes the "shocked amazement" on the faces of a nearby group of construction workers she says were building the family's "new home," and who'd witnessed and/or heard both shootings. And the appearance of the school bus, from which her children descended, and the first words of her daughter--"Hey, where's Cricket?"

Then:

Later that evening, my uncle, who was the general contractor building our house, called me and said, “What got into you today?” “Nothing,” I responded. “Why?” “Well, the guys said you came barreling into the yard with your truck, slammed the door, and took a gun and a dog over the hill, out of sight. They heard one shot and you came back without the dog. Then you grabbed the goat and headed back up over the hill. They heard another shot, you came back, slammed the pickup door, went back. Then they heard another shot and then you came back without the goat. They said they hurried back to work before you decided they were next!” (Emphasis mine.)

I emphasized the entire outtake again here, because, apparently, Noem's extremely proud of this passage; otherwise, I'm not sure why she included it in the story.

I've described the killings of the dog and the goat as having arisen from a woman in the grip of a rage. Until now, I've done so on the basis of limited--but to my mind compelling--evidence, and on my own experience with rural matters and some alarm bells that were set off in the truncated telling of Noem's tale in places like The Guardian and others who'd obtained a pre-publication copy of the book.

Now I've read "the rest of the story," recounted in Noem's (or her ghostwriter's) own words.

And I'm more sure than ever I have been correct all along.

1. She took a young dog, over which she had no control, on a pheasant hunt. Strike one.
2. Immediately following the pheasant hunt, on the way home, she failed to restrain the dog inside her own truck, and Cricket escaped and went after a neighbor’s chickens. Strike two.
3. She shot the dog, and then the goat, while in a rage (“I hated that dog”) and now she’s bragging about it, and adjusting her recollections to try to get herself out of a difficult situation which hasn’t gone as she had hoped. Strike three.

This woman shouldn't be anywhere near the levers of power, from the White House all the way down to the County Fair.

That she seems to have scuppered her chances, at least for the first, is one of the fortuitous outcomes of her train wreck of a story, and one of the reasons it's a good thing it's been well covered and discussed as it has. It's far more than an "Ooooh! Noooo! She shot her fur baby!!!" separating right-thinking rural voters from their lily-livered urban counterparts. It's the story of a woman who (in her early thirties, by all accounts), behaved badly and acted rashly, and who's so tone-deaf and tin-eared that she thinks telling the story the way she has will accrue to her benefit in 2024.

Just. No.

PS: I'm totally willing to believe she made the whole thing up from start to finish. Because it's baffling to me that any sane woman would tell a story which, if it's true, accrues so far to her detriment. God knows why, though, you'd make such a thing up, unless you've completely lost the plot. That bridge has yet to be crossed. I expect, at some point, witnesses will start to crawl out of the woodwork on one side or the other, and then we'll see.

Wire-Haired Pointer (Purina Ad)

Billy Goat, from The South Dakota Cowgirl

Before I rest my case here, I'll simply add that nowhere, in this multi-page, detailed recounting of the events, does Noem mention "training" for Cricket, that Cricket has "begun" her training, that she'd been in "training" for months and months, that Cricket was attacking and endangering Noem's children, her family, or their livestock (she implies, at one point that Cricket's snapping at, or "attempting to bite" Noem herself during the chicken-killing incident may have been the first time Cricket tried to bite anyone), or any of the other many exculpatory excuses Noem has come up with over the past week or so in order to try to emerge with some dignity and integrity from an escapade that, at the time it happened, and in the recounting a couple of decades later, shows she has none of either.

Now, I do rest my case. The rest of you can take it wherever you like.