When Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor being vetted as a candidate for Donald Trump’s vice-president, admitted in her memoir to having shot and killed her 14-month-old puppy, I have to admit I thought it was a play. She was just testing the waters: how much could she insult human decency without making a dent in her numbers? As the battle rages on, I’m coming to accept that the benighted wire-haired pointer did, for a short time, exist, and was executed for a real crime: chicken killing. It seems a tiny bit unfair, given the two centuries of wire-haired pointer breeding that have gone into creating exactly this fixation with upland (which is to say, non-waterfowl) bird work. But that’s exactly what you’d expect a liberal to say. Next I’ll be on about the death penalty.
Digging in, Noem has gone on to say that not only was she right to execute her pointer, but also that Joe Biden has been remiss in pardoning Major and Commander, both German shepherds inveterately hostile to secret service agents. Commander, with a charge sheet of 24 biting incidents, should have been put down ages ago, according to Noem. He is no longer at the White House, though history doesn’t relate his new address. Major, meanwhile, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after a biting incident involving a National Park employee. No excuses for that – public servants ought to be able to go about their duties bite-free – but to have a thing for guys in parks is less bad, I would contend, than having an aversive fear response to armed secret service agents when you’re the dog of the US president. It’s possible, of course, that both dogs have been destroyed – and “gone to live with friends in Delaware” is what they say to Joe Biden when they mean “gone to live on a farm”.
It would have made much more sense for Biden to have an Irish doodle (amiable, plus a nod to his roots) rather than successive guard dogs with a thing for attacking guards. Poor simple creatures, educated beyond their understanding. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes – who guards the guards, they heard, and responded with a loyal: “Me – I’ll custodian the hell out of them, with biting.” But it’s just a quirk of human nature that the heart wants what it wants when it comes to dogs.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
