One of Donald Trump's potential drivers is facing criticism for sharing the story of how he killed his dog in his memoir.
Christie Nome, the 52-year-old governor of South Dakota, wrote in her soon-to-be-released memoir that the dog, Cricket, was “untrainable” and “dangerous.”
After deciding to put her down, Ms. Nome took the dog to a gravel pit and shot her dead.
“It's not a pleasant job,” he wrote. “But it had to be done.”
The memoir, titled No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How You Move America Forward, is set to be released on May 7, though a portion Retrieved by The Guardian.
The story drew a lot of reactions from people online, prompting Ms Noyam to defend herself in a post on X earlier on Twitter.
He wrote: “We love animals, but tough decisions like this always happen on the farm.”
“Unfortunately, 3 horses that have been in our family for 25 years had to be put down a few weeks ago.”
Ms. Noem, who dropped out of college at 22 to run her family's ranch in South Dakota, wrote in the memoir that she was trying to teach Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, how to behave when she took some people on a pheasant hunt. Old dogs.
But efforts to discipline her, including using an electronic collar, failed, he said.
On her way home from hunting, she stopped to talk to a local family when crickets escaped and attacked their chickens, “grabbing one hen at a time and crushing it with one bite”.
He said the dog “went around to bite me” when he tried to bring it under control and that Cricket was “the picture of pure joy” during the incident.
After apologizing to the family for the dog's behavior, she said she realized she had to put it down.
“I hated that dog,” she said.
The situation prompted her to “do another unpleasant job” that day – to get rid of a male goat that belonged to her family.
The goat smelled “nasty and vile,” “disgusting, musky, maddened,” and would chase her children, knocking them down.
Ms. Nome said she shot down the goat as well as the cricket, but the goat survived the first bullet, forcing her to go back to her truck to retrieve another shell.
In no time the school bus dropped off her children.
Noticing the dog was nowhere to be seen, her daughter asked: “Hey, where's the cricket?”
In the book section, Ms. Noem said she shared the story to illustrate her willingness to do “hard, messy and ugly” things in politics and, if necessary, in life.
“If I were a great politician, I wouldn't be telling the story here,” he said.
Mr Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has indicated Ms Nome is on his list of potential drivers.
Ms. Nome served as her state's lone member in the House of Representatives for eight years before being elected its first female governor in 2018.