Boerbaas criticizes Kristi Noem’s puppy murder excuse: that’s cow manure!

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem reacted with outrage to her revelation that she had shot and killed her family’s “hated” 14-month-old dog by pointing out that executing animals is just an unfortunate reality of farm life.

But the leader of her own state’s farmers’ union says this is a steaming pile of cow pies.

“This is not common at all,” South Dakota Farmers Union President Doug Sombke, a self-described “working class Democrat,” told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I don’t know where she’s coming from, thinking this is the right thing to do. That’s just not it.”

“It’s really a shame,” he added. “South Dakotans are not like that.”

The Republican lawmaker – who put himself forward as a candidate for Donald Trump’s running mate – faced a firestorm of anger when The guard reported on an excerpt from her upcoming book, No Turning Back: The Truth About What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward.

Noem tells how she killed her wire-haired pointer puppy, Cricket, near a gravel pit on her property because he was “untrainable,” killed a neighbor’s chicken and tried to bite her. She wrote that killing Cricket was “not a pleasant job” but that it “had to be done.”

“We love animals, but on a farm these kinds of difficult decisions happen all the time. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago we had to put down 3 horses that had been in our family for 25 years.” she tweeted on April 26 in response to the growing bipartisan backlash that turned her into a national punchline overnight. “If you want more real, honest and politically INcorrect stories that will leave the media gasping, order ‘No Going Back.’”

While the episode is widely believed to have doomed her national political chances, Noem has not backed down and even suggested that President Joe Biden’s dog commander, who was reportedly banned from the White House for biting Secret Service agents, had must be completed.

At the farmers’ union, the Noem drama goes down like a goat hit with a shotgun.

“It’s not an everyday occurrence as she makes it sound,” says Sombke, a fourth-generation farmer. While it may have been an isolated incident, farmers certainly aren’t bragging about it, he said, much less trying to score political points or make sales from it.

“We have our family farms and pets, and you just don’t tell anyone about those things,” he said. “It’s really disturbing to think that she thought this was such a good thing to say.”

Since the scandal broke, he said, everyone he has spoken to has brought up Noem’s comments and he believes the governor is doing South Dakota a “disfavor” by making the story her “go-to” topic.

“If her goal was to sell more books and gain attention at a time when we have a former president facing criminal charges, then I think she succeeded,” he added.

But, he said, the state’s farming community isn’t wasting too much time worrying about Noem.

“They are busy with their lives. They all roll their eyes and say, “What the heck,” but they also plant their crops and handle their livestock. They just say, ‘Wow, there it goes, a politician with a big mouth,'” he said. “It’s absolutely a shame.”