I do not follow the news, but I do follow dog trainers who are in the news. Recently, Zak George posted on his Instagram stories about being approached by the CNN to give his thoughts on South Dakota's Governor killing her dog.
I linked the YouTube from Zak George's video above. But I also wanted to post my thoughts on this.
I made my own video reply, but for those who don't want to listen to me and would prefer to read, here we go!
First off, we weren't there with Governor Kristi Noem when she shot her dog and killed it. But as I mentioned in my video, South Dakota has one of the worst gun regulations in the U.S. of A. The fact that a spur of the moment decision to shoot her dog could occur shows both the mental incapacity of this governor to not regulate her own emotions of frustration, but the ease at which an individual can pick up a gun and use it.
In South Dakota, due to poor gun regulations, children and teens suffer at the hands of themselves and others with greater than 1/2 of deaths of children occurring by suicide due to guns.
If you think that the gun control advocates are skewing the data, take a look at the increase in child deaths due to gun violence in the primary literature.
You seriously cannot argue with the facts.
Then, there is a discussion on is this legal?
Yes, you can humanely euthanize a companion dog via gunshot if you are remotely located. But it is to relieve critical distress when no other means are available.
As the American Veterinary Medical Association says:
Gunshot should only be performed by highly skilled personnel trained in the use of firearms (eg, animal control and law enforcement officers, properly trained veterinarians) and only in jurisdictions that allow for legal firearm use. A method acceptable with conditions, use of gunshot may be appropriate in remote areas or emergency situations in which withholding death by gunshot will result in prolonged, unrelieved pain and suffering of the animal or imminent danger to human life.
My thoughts are that Governor Noem doesn't actually know the rules on use of firearms for humane euthanasia, but hey, farm life right?
I suspect that shooting an exuberant otherwise healthy 14-month-old wirehaired pointer in the spot deemed appropriate by the AVMA really wouldn't be that easy without sedation.
Chances are high that she shot like a 'hunter' aiming for centre of mass. But again, we weren't there. So is she criminally liable for animal cruelty in the death of her dog? Unlikely. Because dogs are still considered chattel. So unless you have eye witnesses saying that the dog was in distress and suffered from emotional and physical harm for a prolonged period prior to death, she would not get charged.
Zak George and CNN news anchors discussed that she claims that the dog was untrainable, and yet, any of the professional dog trainers and behaviourists would know that at 14-months this dog is going through social maturity and while it would be difficult, it is not attainable. Dog owners and trainers who put their dogs into situations where they cannot control their emotions failed on the second rung of the humane hierarchy. Those that are reaching for punishment based training methods like shock collars lack the education in dog training and really have no business being in the unregulated industry that is dog training. But hey, what do we know? Veterinarians know nothing about behaviour. Do you see the eyes rolling in my skull? You are not just looking at a 'high-drive' dog, this is looking at a dog that has emotional dysregulation. Well, and an owner who has emotional dysregulation as well.
There has been some discourse on TikTok within our humane dog trainer community, some of which say that you as the adult human should look inward when you have frustrations that lead you to want to choose violence, coercion, shock collars or any other punishment or aversive training methods. Emotional dysregulation occurs a lot in reactive dogs, and in reactive humans. Just look at people with road rage.
Humans hold themselves above all other sentient beings, and yet we have the same limbic system that our paleomammalian ancestors had. The cognitive processes that hold us apart from our domestic canine companions is our ethical and moral advancements. Yet, arguably looking at the war in Gaza, the continued proliferation of antisemitism within the U.S. and the backwards movement of women's right to choose, arguably, our dogs may actually show more capability for compassion than humans.