How Kristi Noem missed her shot to be vice-president

Most surreal and disturbing is the story Ms Noem recounts, with some joy, of shooting one of her dogs. Cricket, the ill-fated animal, was a 14-month-old wirehair pointer who ruined a pheasant hunt that Ms Noem had planned for her lodge guests. The rumbustious Cricket then finished her day by attacking some chickens (“she was a trained assassin”) and attempting to bite the hand that fed her (Ms Noem’s). “I hated that dog,” the governor writes. She then decides to put her down by shooting her dead in a gravel pit.