After South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem admitted in her new book to killing her "untrainable" 14-month-old puppy Cricket, an old tweet from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton resurfaced with the perfect warning.
Noem—who has been mentioned as a potential running mate for former president Donald Trump—laid out the decision to kill the dog in her forthcoming memoir No Going Back. She wrote that “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old" with an “aggressive personality." She said she "hated" the "untrainable" dog and decided to shoot Cricket after taking her to a gravel pit.
The disturbing anecdote first garnered attention after The Guardian reported on it, noting that Noem also wrote about killing a goat she claimed was "nasty and mean" and “loved to chase” Noem's children.
And not long after the story gained traction, an old tweet from Clinton resurfaced, this one with a simple message:
"Don't vote for anyone you wouldn't trust with your dog."
You can see the post below.
People agreed the tweet had aged well, as do so many of Clinton's warnings of the past several years.
People railed against Noem for what she did to the poor dog.
Noem has defended her decision to kill the dog, saying in a statement that she "can understand why some people are upset about a 20-year-old story of Cricket, one of the working dogs at our ranch, in my upcoming book."
She added:
“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did."
Noem framed the story as an example of the grimmer aspects of farm life that sometimes have to be faced. She said she has "never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle" and that she had simply "followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor."
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