Kristi Noem sitting on a tailgate drinking coffee
Kristi Noem embodies the reason I wanted to join with Leo and launch Old Truck Good Coffee.
The first woman to be governor of South Dakota, she is pro life, pro carbon economy, and seemingly pretty willing to use her office for her own gain. I don't agree with her on much of anything politically. As an American in civil discourse, those issues should be our topics of conversation. She recently excerpted a story from 20 years ago when she shot a dog that was biting people and killing chickens on her remote South Dakota ranch.1 That seems to be all that other liberals can talk about.
Was Noem right to kill that dog? I have no idea. I do know that it is a different equation out there than in Portland, Oregon or even 200 miles west in Pierre. I won’t criticize her for it. I would rather you didn’t either, because when you do you are further separating the nation.
I have never lived on a ranch. From what I have seen and been told, it is a different kind of life than I have ever led. Life and death are on stage every day. Living and dying animals are directly related to economics.
Those chickens killed by a miscreant dog are livelihood. Picture watching something taking away your income. If you were a software developer and your dog kept destroying your computer, you would have to do something about it.
There is some certainty if you keep working dogs that there will be a time to kill one. From what I understand, it is hard. Some have to ask someone else to do it because they can’t bring themselves to that place. The love of dogs reaches across urban and rural hearts.
My own dog bit me in a surprising moment, and I delved into a quest for what guidance would tell me the right thing to do. I could find none.2
I volunteer with a working dog animal rescue, fostering dogs looking for a home. Some are taken off of ranches because they "put themselves into early retirement" — they stop doing their jobs.
The dedicated folks at rescues are always trying to find more fosters and transports. They can not save all dogs in a bad situation, even get them into foster homes like mine to buy them time. If you want more dogs saved, look into how you can volunteer!
There are more dogs than available homes. Look through Pet Finder3 and you will see the faces of all these pups. Very few people want to take a dog with a history of biting and killing animals. Shelters and rescues, when having to choose which dogs to take in, give preference to ones that are likely to be placed.
It is tremendously sad. Dogs get killed because they don't have a place in this world. Often it is because they did not learn good behaviors or were traumatized. It is not their fault, it is tremendously sad.
But frankly, I think we should take care how much we modify our lives for our dogs.
There was even less shelter availability 20 years ago, when Noem shot her dog Cricket. Noem’s ranch, near a town of 700 people, is a long ways from any ideal re-homing option even today. How far from Castlewood to a no-kill shelter with a vacancy that is willing to take a dog with a bite history?
It is extremely distasteful for me to think on it, but sometimes it is the best thing for everything around for a dog to be killed.
Before writing this, I took some time to read about Kristi Noem. She seems to be a pretty bad leader. It seems very likely that Noem strong-armed state officials to get her daughter a certification she was not qualified for.4 She supports the man who is bent on ending American Democracy. I want to talk about that.
When Saturday Night Live satirizes Noem and you share the video on social media, she is getting just what she wants out of you. She released the dog-shooting episode excerpt in advance of the book release. It was specifically designed so that you would attack her for it and rural people would see you as criticizing and alienating them. We become more splintered. It is harder still for us to trust each other. If you are posting memes about Noem and dogs, good job.
I started writing for Old Truck Good Coffee (please do subscribe!) so that we can see each other better. I felt very vulnerable publishing Since Sunday I have been deciding whether to kill my dog but wanted to offer up the perspectives of both urban and rural hearts from a sensitive, liminal place. My struggles with Axle seemed to serve that purpose.5
I hope to stir empathy about our frustrations and fears and uncertainty. Mockery is the opposite. Mockery comes from a failure to understand your subject. To those you are mocking, it sounds like you outright reject them. This nation relies on civil discourse among us, so that mockery is not going to work for the US of A.6
It does work for those who want us to be splintered and untrusting. It works for people who want to build their fiefdoms of grievance and anger.7 It works for hate groups and shitty narcissists.
It is very sad, but people on ranches have to shoot dogs. I asked a man I know who grew up on a farm, and he didn’t like to talk about it. A lot of ranchers are passionate dog lovers like me, and like a lot of you reading this. They have stories of the great dogs they have known. Their hearts are lifted by the presence of their four legged friends.
A man in a bar met Axle and said my dog looked just like his boyhood dog in Northern California. He rode horses all day as a kid with his dog by his side. “Never trained that one, he just knew what to do.” That old truck driver and excavator operator was retiring and moving to Wyoming, told me he was looking for the dog to take along with him. I told the man that I hoped he found that dog, but joked that he couldn’t have Axle. Axle is all mine.
It is important to talk about the problems of Kristi Noem. Choosing to focus on this incident instead shows your ignorance of how other Americans live. We can be a part of reversing our separation by pausing when that immediate, fearful mockery comes to mind and considering another thing to say.
It is pretty much the best way to piss off Kristi Noem and any shitty narcissist around.
A left-leaning account of the excerpt: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/apr/26/trump-kristi-noem-shot-dog-and-goat-book ↩︎
truly the most dangerous of websites. The moment you open it, you are destined to adopt some perfect nugget. For your safety, I am not putting the link here.
“South Dakota report: Noem’s daughter got special treatment” https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-kristi-noem-south-dakota-cd98c18117ab97c598e3618d15e4aa8b
By the way, Axle is doing absolutely great! We are constantly training and also enjoying life together. It is a long road of increasing trust in each other. If you get in too deep with your dog, get a professional trainer involved.
Looking into my heart, I realize that I do mock people. Rudy Giuliani, for instance. I just don’t get that guy.
These fiefdoms are being built on both political extremes, though folks only seem to see and comment on those most distant from them.