07-08-2025
Did Kristi Noem shoot a dog?
If you've watched the latest episode of South Park -- "Get a Nut," the second ep of Season 27 that aired on Wednesday -- you know that A LOT of people and things got skewered, from Donald Trump to ICE.
That included the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who was the focus for much of the episode. The running joke throughout is that Noem continually shoots and kills dogs, including Superman's pup Krypto.
So if you're here, you might be wondering what the deal is with that running joke. Is there something in Noem's history that led to that joke? We're here to help.
Did Kristi Noem shoot a dog?
Back in 2024, in a book she wrote then called "No Going Back: The Truth on What's Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward," she talked about how she had to kill her dog Cricket.
Per The Guardian, here's what happened: She took cricket pheasant hunting with some older dogs, hoping the younger pup would learn from them.
Here's more (WARNING: This gets graphic):
Noem describes calling Cricket, then using an electronic collar to attempt to bring her under control. Nothing worked. Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem's truck and attacked the family's chickens, 'grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another'.
Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like 'a trained assassin'.
When Noem finally grabbed Cricket, she says, the dog 'whipped around to bite me'. Then, as the chickens' owner wept, Noem repeatedly apologised, wrote the shocked family a check 'for the price they asked, and helped them dispose of the carcasses littering the scene of the crime'.
Then? She wrote, "I realised I had to put her down.'
What did Kristi Noem say about the dog killing controversy?
She addressed on X (formerly Twitter):
And there was another statement, via ABC:
"The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did," she wrote.
"Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it's hard and painful," Noem wrote. "I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor."
