I've seen a couple of folks argue that this appeals to rural people, who don't agree with the sentimental attachment to dogs.
I'm skeptical. Maybe my family is different, but they love their dogs. Dogs sit on the couch with people. Dogs go everywhere with you.
www.salon.com/2024/04/29/k...
It was just very normal growing up for people to have their dogs with them all the time. It's become more of a thing in the city in recent years, but even in the 90s, everywhere we went, so did at least one dog.
Nor were they all little lap dogs, though we did have a spoiled dachsund. My mom's then-husband kept weimaraners as hunting dogs. They had free roam of the house and would often nap with their heads in people laps.
I mean, my mom's second husband was exactly the kind of racist, mean-spirited asshole that we now recognize as maximally MAGA. But he loved his weimaraner. He even took the dog flying with him, which you don't do for "utility" reasons.
I know folks who keep the working dogs in their outside kennel and are def not treated like pets - but - when one doesn't work out it fails upward into house pet, not murder
Yeah, this dog definitely tried to crawl in laps. It was our fault. We let him sit in laps when he was a puppy and just so cute and all soft skin. So when he got too big, well, he didn't understand.
Yeah. I'm very skeptical too. I had a friend that raised cattle for meat and they never did anything like this. There was a level of respect and care for them that I don't see exhibited by the governor.
I mean also she somehow expected a 14 month old bird dog puppy to act like a fully trained dog, and probably did a terrible job training it, and then shot it for being a dog. Rural people know how expensive and valuable hunting dogs are, and that plenty of times they just don’t quite work out
But that’s when you find someone else who wants the dog, or try new training, or accept that the dog is a pet and not a hunting dog. You don’t shoot a dog unless it’s mortally injured and in severe pain, or rabid, or actively trying to kill someone.
That's such a weird take. People in rural areas might have more "utility" for their dogs than as just pets/companies. Hunting, herding etc.
But the leap to "and therefore they think of dogs as tools and not pets" is too far I think.
I have family who have/had farms and there if definitely a mental distinction said that gets made between pets and livestock/working animals. But that the callousness of this act stands out even taking that into consideration. It's a puppy acting like a puppy for Christ's sake.
Working dogs that display certain traits -- particularly aggressiveness towards livestock -- are not long for this world. And not all working dogs are suitable for rehoming as pets. There is aggressiveness that is acceptable for protecting goats from mountain lions that you don't want around kids.
She’s trying to act like she is some 1800s pioneer settler struggling to survive and it either the dog or her kids who get to eat. Truth is she just killed it because she was annoyed with it.
Gun dogs aren't cheap, and Noem obviously failed the basic test every responsible gun owner knows they have to pass every time they hold a loaded firearm.
But suburbanites with fancy trucks love that Carhartt cosplay crap.
The “that’s how it is on a farm” types make my blood boil. They don’t have animal shelters to surrender the poor creature to if you don’t want it? Or falling that, at least a vet that can put the dog down humanely?
My in-laws are farmers and don't have in-door pets, but they're outliers. Her behavior is way outside the norm for rural folk. Anyone who treated animals like that would be getting a monthly visit form the sheriff, "just to check up on things."
My dad, a rural southern conservative marine, was so emotional when he thought that our dog was about to die that I had to dig the grave for him. When a neighbor shot him years earlier, he resolved that if he ever found out who actually did it, he would return the favor. That argument is nonsense
In Western Colorado, I've seen ranchers to threaten to shoot *other people's* dogs for harassing livestock, but that's because they expect their neighbors to be as responsible with their dogs as they are.
Yeah, someone shot my dog for trying to get into their chicken yard. But honestly, they didn't try to kill the dog. They used a BB gun that got one in his ear.
In the moment of finding our eviscerated birds strewn everywhere, for all the hunting he'd done and all the vermin exterminated, my husband couldn't bring himself to do more than fire a warning shot after our neighbor's dogs. Who continued to run loose.
Listened to Thom Hartman last Friday & he had a caller from ND who was fine that Noem was raised a farm girl & that killing the dog was part of that life; that she (the caller) & Noem’s farmer constituents got it 🤷♀️
My father, very strong conservative, is absolutely disgusted with her.
He has no problem putting a dog down to put it out of its misery but would never kill a dog because it wasn't a good hunting dog (he's had several that weren't).
One of the big problems out here in rural Texas re: animal cruelty is dog fighting. Anyone who treats dogs the way Noem does would immediately raise red flags with the local LEO.
Having grown up in the country in East Texas, I know of no one who there who doesn't have a sentimental attachment to their dogs or any dogs.
This sounds like when they said Southerners didn't like medium rare steaks and burgers. "There's a powerful stench of mendacity in here!"
