Mitt Romney Responds to Noem’s Dog Incident: “I Didn’t Shoot My Dog

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) responded on Tuesday to the fervor over an anecdote in Gov. Kristi Noem’s (R-SD) upcoming book, No Going Back, about her executing a 14-month-old puppy.

Romney infamously once tied his dog to the roof of his car and drove 12 hours, a story that came out when he was running for president in 2012 and arguably affected his campaign in much the same way that Noem’s dog-killing story has affected her chances of becoming former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, according to reports.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Romney told HuffPost. During the incident, which took place in 1983, Romney had to stop to clean the dog, an Irish setter named Seamus, but continued on with the road trip with the dog still tied to the top of the car.

In her book, Noem describes a hunting puppy, a wirehaired pointer named Cricket, as “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she wrote, according to the Guardian, about bringing the puppy to a gravel pit and executing her. “But it had to be done.”

The report suggests the comment from Romney that “I didn’t eat my dog” comes from an incident former President Barack Obama once recalled of his childhood. He lived for a short time, from 1967 to 1971, in Indonesia, and he said of the time that he was “introduced to dog meat.”

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In her book, Noem also reportedly describes the moment her daughter, Kennedy, came home and asked about the puppy.

“Kennedy looked around confused,” Noem wrote, saying her daughter asked, “Hey, where’s Cricket?”