Not-Dog People
A friend of mine grew up on a cattle farm in Eastern Ohio. We had a lot in common as educators and as coaches. But the one big difference between us was dogs. I had a dog, one that I actually brought to work (school) from time to time. On the weekends when we had long wrestling tournaments, requiring hours to setup and run, I’d try to bring my dog over to school for at least part of the time. That way, she wasn’t alone at home for most of the weekend.
To me that was natural. Not only did I love her, but I was responsible for her. Besides, kids loved her too, and she was incredibly well behaved. But my friend didn’t feel that way at all.
In his life, dogs were a threat and a menace. Dogs would wander onto the farm and chase the cattle. Not only would the cows panic, but they would run, into the woods, into barbed wire fences, and down into ravines. The dogs, at best, reduced the value of the cows by chasing the weight off of them. At worst, cows were injured or even killed. Either way, it was a threat to their business.
So he wasn’t a dog fan. Dogs belonged where they belonged, not near a school (or a wrestling mat), and definitely not near a cattle farm. And when dogs became too much of a frequent menace to his herd – well – he got rid of them.
Dog People
At first, I was shocked by that attitude. I’ve had a dog, ever since I can remember. There’s a succession of dogs in my life: from Princess to Louie I and Louie II, to Rory, Paige, Sierra and Dash (the best dog ever); and now “The Five”, Buddy (maybe co-best ever), Atticus, Keelie, Lou and CeCe. But my friend had his whole different experience, one that I grew to respect, even though I couldn’t agree.
You probably know where this essay is going. South Dakota’s Governor Kristi Noem, like most politicians looking to “move up”, wrote her autobiography. While it hasn’t been published yet, she’s releasing “teasers” from the book to generate interest. And one of those teasers was her story of shooting her own dog.
That story is generating a lot of “heat” in the “Mainstream Media”, with commentators furious about the callousness and cruelty of shooting a dog named Cricket, only a puppy, who didn’t behave in a way the Governor approved. All three late-night comedians jumped on board with scathing jokes. She’s being pilloried for every failure: not training the dog properly, not accepting the dog’s failure as a hunting dog and doing something else with him, not keeping him under control when he escaped from her truck and attacked a neighbor’s chicken flock.
If she couldn’t control the puppy, why not take him to a shelter, or a rescue, or somewhere other than a gravel pit to deliver the kill shot? And, of course, all of those criticisms are absolutely right, at least to Jenn and me, who just spent $6000 on Atticus’s knee surgery.
Worse, Noem is literally bragging about it. This isn’t some obscure chapter in her book, she specifically put it out there to generate publicity. And, probably, to gain the admiration of one man, the Republican nominee for President of the United States, looking for a Vice Presidential candidate.
Trying Out
Donald Trump loves “tough men”. He’s shown it over and over again, making admiring statements about Putin, Xi, Orban, Kim, and Erdogan. And Trump likes “performative toughness”. He’s not a connoisseur of football or baseball, but he’s all-in for professional wrestling. And, I’m guessing, for tough women who shoot their puppies named Cricket.
Trump’s not a dog person either. He didn’t have one in the White House, because, he said, he’d look “foo-foo” walking the dog on the White House lawn. What that really means is that Trump sees dogs as political props, not companions. And, I have to point out, that there have been other Presidents who didn’t like dogs, notably Richard Nixon. In fact, Nixon was so uncomfortable with dogs that to do a “dog moment” for television, they had to sprinkle meat powder on Nixon’s pants leg to get a dog to come to him — dogs know!!.
My fellow dog lover’s (and there is more of us), don’t miss this. There is a significant number of people who don’t like dogs. And there are those who need to see some “performative toughness” to prove a politician’s, and particularly a female politician’s, “strength”. So while Governor Noem’s execution of Cricket might seem like political suicide, it might also be the “shared space” in some obscure political Vin diagram. Where do the circles of “tough politicians”, “Not Dog People” and Donald Trump intersect? Right over Cricket’s dead body.
