South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem faces backlash for killing pet dog

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem faces severe backlash after making shocking revelations in new book detailing how she killed her pet dog, The Hill reported.

Although she mentioned the killings as anecdote to explain how tough decisions need to be taken, the move has badly backfired her.

In her book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward", she described how she was growing angry with her 14-month-old dog named Cricket. 

She described the dog as "untrainable" and "dangerous."

She recounted an incident when returning from a family hunt trip, Cricket attacked a local family’s chickens, “grabbing one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

When she tried stopping him, he whipped around to bite her. She explains that is when she knew she had to do something.

She wrote, "I hated that dog."

So later she took him to a gravel pit on her property and shot him. "It was not a pleasant job," she wrote. "But it had to be done."

However, after the tale garnered several reactions from people online, Noem took to X, to defend herself.

She wrote: "We love animals, but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down 3 horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years."