Justice for Cricket!
The post Apropos Of Nothing In Particular, Let’s Check The Animal Cruelty Laws In South Dakota appeared first on Above the Law.
South Dakota governor Kristi Noem is thirsty for the vice presidential nomination and she’s ticking off all the boxes. She went down to Texas to get her teeth “fixed” and put out a chintzy informercial about it managing to tick off every professional in her own state. And, of course, she’s put out her book extolling her MAGA bona fides.
It was all going to plan until…
Yes, for some reason, Noem — and every person close to her who had an opportunity to look at her book before it saw the light of day — thought her hagiography would benefit from an extended anecdote about killing a puppy for inconveniencing her bird hunt with its youth and lack of training.
The Guardian obtained excerpts from her book.
By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, 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”.
****
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.
“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”
Most people would invest in training, or seek to rehouse the dog, or at the very least not talk about puppy murder. But Kristi Noem wants you to know that she is not most people.
If I were to venture a guess at what she was thinking, I’d assume she had mainlined conservative media’s obsession with Joe Biden’s dog Commander and his history of biting Secret Service agents (Commander’s, not Joe’s… as far as we know!) and thought she’d score some points by landing on the side of murdering aggressive dogs.
She miscalculated.
And when you’ve lost Catturd…
But seriously, animals sometimes don’t survive on a farm. Indeed, some livestock exist to be killed. But South Dakota has laws distinguishing between livestock and dogs:
(8) “Livestock,” any agricultural or commercial animal owned, bred, or raised for profit, but not including dogs, cats, rabbits, or other household pets;
And when it comes to household animals, the law makes an exception for licensed veterinarians to euthanize those cute critters. Noem doesn’t frame her story as though Cricket took a trip to the vet.
From CBS: “Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” Noem wrote. “Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor.”
40-1-21. Killing or injuring animal of another as misdemeanor–Authorized euthanasia excepted
No person may intentionally kill any animal of any age or value, the property of another, nor intentionally injure or mistreat any such animal. A violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor. This section may not be construed to prevent euthanasia by a licensed veterinarian with proper authority from the animal’s owner nor may it prevent acts of euthanasia authorized by this chapter. This section may not be construed to prohibit euthanasia conducted by the municipality or under a municipality’s animal control activities. This section may not be construed to prohibit activities conducted under chapter 40-34.
Maybe Noem did take the dog to a vet and she’s just fronting that she personally Old Yeller’d poor Cricket. Either way, its a political miscue for the ages.
But the law might be the least of her worries. Does anybody have eyes on John Wick right now?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
