Bedlam Farm Blog Journal by Jon Katz

I can understand and even sympathize with the awful situation Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota found herself in. I have no sympathy at all for the cruel, almost suicidal idiocy of the way she killed her dog or her account of what happened or how she felt about it.

From the first, his responses to why she killed Cricket have been disgusting more than anything.

I have a fantasy: Rather than mob assaulting people like her,  which seems like hysteria to me, perhaps she could have gotten help from someone wiser and more compassionate. I don’t like mobs very much, however just their cause.

I fantasize that one day, we will have an animal rights movement that we can call up and talk to when there are complex decisions to be made and we need help, and where there is often no clear right or wrong.

These are the last people you want to hear from when there is trouble or even when there isn’t.

Rather than helping, our present-day animal rights movement and many dog and animal lovers respond with death threats, cruelty, second-guessing, and abuse. We are all alone with these decisions, only as good as our empathy and sense of morality.

The hard truth is that you can love a dog too much or hate a dog too much, and dogs can suffer awfully in either case. It’s often tough to know the line between one and the other. How long should you keep a dog you don’t love or want, and what are your options?

I have never hated a dog I’ve had, but I’ve had to make the awful decision to euthanize one after spending $15,000 on holistic, psychiatric, and Chinese veterinary care to try to keep him alive.  A woman down the road was dying of breast cancer and had no money for medicine or assistance. She died an awful death, and I thought I needed to find some perspective.

I failed – my failure – and not his, after he bit three children, leaping over the fence at once and biting one in the throat. This was after three years of searching for treatment and ways to keep him alive. Confining a border collie in a small kennel for the rest of his life was not, I was told again and again, a moral option.

Like the Governor of South Dakota, I tried to be honest about it and, in return, received vicious e-mails from people who thought they were helping animals by sending them.  But unlike her, I was never happy about it or claimed it showed how tough it was. That is the most cancerous macho, the worst of being a man or a woman.

Unlike her, I was devastated by the loss of a dog I loved dearly, who was responsible in part for changing my life and inspiring my first move out of my everyday life into the country.

That was Orson, my first border collie and a remarkable dog I have never stopped loving. It was a sad day when the specialists at Cornell University told me after days of examination that Orson was damaged from birth and could not be cured. It would happen again, they said, and I could never claim I didn’t know.

I’d written a book about Orson (first called Devon), and a movie was made partly about him and our relationship.

The animal rights response was to teach me and others that they no longer had a valuable role to play when difficult decisions were made about animals and pets.

One difference between Governor Noem and me is that I was never proud of what I decided and have never bragged about it as a sign of my toughness. I could never have shot him or killed a goat for smelling bad. I didn’t know they could ever smell good.

I know good people who killed a dog for extreme violence; I don’t judge them. I don’t know anyone who killed them for being annoying and allegedly aggressive.

My second major dog failure was Fate, a border collie from a champion breeder in Wales. I had a situation similar to Governor Noem’s in some ways, but it ended quite differently.

Before Fate, I had trained four border collies to her sheep and gotten a fifth who came knowing how to do it.

Fate showed all the instincts and drive of the border collie, but one – she would not bully, pressure, or herd sheep. I was astonished and stumped; I brought in some trainees, called others, and went online looking for guidance. Nothing worked.

This was my first experience with a gentle border collie, and I spent months seeking advice from experts and teachers.

Nothing worked from that day years ago to today.

She loves to be around sheep and run circles around them all day.

She will not herd or challenge them, and they ignore her. She is the Ferdinand of Border Collies. She loves sheep too much to hurt them or bully them. This was frustrating and disturbing to my ego, pride, and the needs of the farm.

It was rare for a herding dog with her drive and instinct, but she became one of Maria and me’s most beautiful dogs. We can’t imagine life without her.

I gave up training to train her for fear I would wreck her spirit in the process. I am immensely grateful she is still here. We love each other, and she loves Maria, her human, dearly.

By now, we all know the story of Governor Noem’s dog, Cricket; I don’t need to repeat it. I remember hearing about it, turning to Maria, and shaking my head. “Did I ever consider shooting her or putting Fate down for refusing to herd sheep?” Never, said Maria.

I was glad to hear it. Fate is a beautiful dog for Maria and us. She won’t herd sheep, but she will sit with Maria for hours while she makes her art. She has never once stepped on a quilt or fabric for a potholder.

Maria takes her everywhere, and Fate is an excellent companion in the woods. She has never run off or let Maria out of the fight for over a few seconds. When Maria gets lost, Fate leads her home. When Maria goes to the pasture, Fate runs joyously around the flock until her tongue is handed off the ground.

I understand some formers who shoot their dogs when they are dying and why some people just don’t love the dog they get; farmers often believe shooting them is the most humane way to end their lives, and they think it is easier for them to die at home than on a stranger’s linoleum floor.

I feel the same way about sheep.

I have never been able or willing to shoot a dog, and aside from Orson, all of my dogs who died were stricken with cancer or other terminal illnesses.  They died quickly and quietly at the hands of a trained vet.

I do sometimes euthanize them when they are in pain. It is not love in my mind to keep a gravely ill dog alive for my own needs and gratification.

I have rehomed several dogs I couldn’t love or give them what they wanted and needed. There is no shame in giving a dog a better home than yours if that is the case. Once again, the animal rights movement condemned me for improving their lives. Everyone was happier where they went.

The sickening part of Governor Noems’s fight-for-your-life survival media tour was her ignorance and transparency. I don’t know anyone so dumb as to buy her ridiculous effort to change and justify her story. I screwed up was the only rational response, even in the Trump error, where lies are gold.

She thought blowing Cricket’s brains out would please Mr. Trump and get her the vice president job. That says something about Trump to me, as well as her. He always brags about how much he loves and admires her, and he still does. She believes that following his model of denying everything and re-writing his history will get her off the hook and back into contention.

She underestimated the American love of dogs, which, for all its troubles, is more powerful than politics. It is bi-partisan love.

I don’t get into the other lies in her book; I’ll leave that to the cable news people.

Governor Noem said shooting her dog proved her courage and willingness to take on the tough decisions of a leader.

She never tried to get help for the dog or have him euthanized in a more civilized way than blasting the healthy and unsuspecting creature in a pit. She is a living example of what a leader should never do.

In one of her interviews, Noem criticized President Biden for finding a new home for the German Shepherd Commander, who had bitten 24 Secret Service agents. She said he should have shot his dog. She added cowardliness to her other mistakes. And why, I wondered, was she free to jump out of her truck and go after her neighbor’s chickens?

Yes, Biden should have done something before the number got that high, but he did the right thing: The Commander is in a home where he is contained and safe and where other people are not in any danger from him.

Sometimes, that’s the best you can do. I couldn’t do it with Orson (in my mind) because it was clear he would find a way to hurt someone again unless he was confined in a severe dog jail; that would be a worse fate for him than euthanasia.

The decision to kill a dog is personal, despite the ranting and railing of people who claim to be defending animal rights.

Her claim to have “hated” her dog was revealing. I never hated Orson for being so damaged somewhere along the line. He wasn’t trying to be evil; he could not control his impulses. (That has happened to me in life, also.)

I don’t judge people who decide what is necessary for them; I’m not in their homes or farms, and I can’t and won’t judge them for what they do. As Governor Noem’s pathetic tour demonstrates, how they do it and feel about it is something else. She is not showing me how strong she is, but how weak and dishonest she is. Even Donald Trump, the King of the Comeback, couldn’t save her and didn’t want to try.

Dog people can usually instantly grasp when such a decision is justified and when it isn’t. As they say, you can lie to some people sometimes, but you can’t lie to all the people all of the time.

I have seen many people in America who love their dogs too much and rationalize and excuse them for awful and even dangerous behaviors. Thousands of children have paid for this blindness with their faces, legs, and arms.  Some dogs can’t live in populated areas with children and many people.

I wondered when I read about the unfortunate governor—right and wrong—who could be so foolish and deaf to public sensibility. Her description of what happened was beyond ridiculous for a seasoned politician or anyone with much sensitivity. It was and is political suicide, even in this time of lies.

A public figure, or anyone for that matter, doesn’t crow like a teenage football star over blasting a dog for killing chickens and failing to hunt properly.

Killing Orson humbled and crushed me.  It changed me and tested my morality, not my strength. I don’t care about the animal rights e-mails; they somehow think this makes life better for animals to attack their humans cruelly. I don’t get it, but I pay no attention.

I am sorry to this day for Orson’s death and am secure with the knowledge I did everything I could do – too much, really – to save him.

I promised that awful day when I saw the blood running from the boy’s neck – he was riding a bike down the road – that this must never happen again with a dog of mine. I’ve kept that pledge and will keep it to the end. No matter how many nasty messages I kept, I have no apologies for that.

I hope we return someday to a country with a moral code, a gentler and kinder nation. Lying is wrong; refusing to take responsibility for our mistakes is a kind of crime to me.

In the governor’s mind, it’s okay to lie. In other political minds, it’s a virtue to be unfaithful, to steal, to legitimize hatred and bigotry, even rebellion and insurrection, sometimes in the name of religion. I hope it’s never okay to kill a dog in that way and claim it’s a sign of strength and character. The governor’s slimy tour will end up killing some dogs for sure because people like her are too lazy to train them.

Perhaps one day, there will be an organization somewhere willing to help our dog people make the right decisions rather than for them to sort through threats about being killed. Was there ever an animal, I wonder, who was helped by death threats to their owners?

Will Governor Noem ever feel shame?