A good hunting dog will not kill your livestock. The dog was a retriever, you only need one and it doesn't kill the birds. You shoot the bird and the dog gets the dead bird and brings it to you. You typically wear camo for that if it really matters.
Not everyone has been around rural life and these things can seem cruel to you but normal to a person who has, it's been a while for me. But what Noem described doing is normal behavior in that lifestyle.
I'm not defending her, I don't really know much about her.
Hard disagree. I'd point you to Susano's post, but I feel like throwing in my two cents, so here goes.
I've been rural my entire life and lived on and around farms the entire time and what you're describing is absolutely not normal. The only people I know who would do such a thing are the guys on the farm about a mile from where I am, and they've had the cops called on them multiple times for animal cruelty. I won't go into details, but they bought dogs specifically to kill their overbred, out-of-control populations among other things. Those are the people I know who would do this kind of thing.
Noem's dog clearly had a high prey drive, which means she had a few options:
1. Train the dog to control its prey drive and perform the job she wants it to do. It was only a year old, so still quite malleable.
2. Rehome the dog or give it to a rescue. A purebred pointer would've certainly been adoptable, even if only as a pet.
3. Keep at as a pet, not a hunting dog.
4. Blow its brains out and then kill off any other animals that annoy you.
Prey drives can be hard to control. I've had collies who, strangely, couldn't be trusted around my geese but were fine with my goats, for example. I also have a mini dachshund who, until very recently, couldn't be trusted around cats at all. I managed to not kill them, by the way.
The point is, if you really can't train them out of their drive, then what most people do is simply keep them as pets or rehome them as pets, letting the new owners know that the dog can't be trusted around smaller animals.
Instead, this what seems to be what happened with Noem:
1. Got a dog she didn't like.
2. Didn't train it.
3. Took it hunting, expecting that it would just do what the other dogs on the hunt would do, no training required.
4. It (unsurprisingly) didn't and got super excited around pheasants. Prey drive activated!
5. Noem stopped to chat with a friend and the dog got out of the truck, somehow. Was the window rolled down? Was she keeping it in the truck bed? Did she let it out because she's a moron? Anyway, not differentiating between chickens and pheasants (untrained again), it went on a killing spree.
6. Noem startled it by trying to grab it and it "turned to bite" her, but obviously didn't.
7. Noem's out for blood and kills the dog. Her own prey drive is now activated.
8. Decides she hates her uncastrated goat because it smells like hormonal male goat and does goat things, which happens to ruin her kids' clothes.
9. Shoots it.
10. Brag about it in a book.
This is the ten-step plan no one should follow. Even people who have shot strays coming around their livestock feel really bad about it and don't go around talking about it like it makes them alphas. Cricket could've easily gone to a new home, especially as a purebred. She could've also made a great pet, and clearly her children loved the dog.
