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The realities of farm life
https://apnews.com/article/kristi-noem- … 534da1c79e - Yes, I have killed lots of animals and birds. I butchered chickens with my uncle when I was young and took a couple of live chickens on a scout camping trip for dinner for the troop. (Funny how they quickly turned away when it was time to make the cut.) I delivered my pigs to the butchers. The cooking process of hams, sausage and scrapple is better done by people doing it in quantities with the right equipment and experience. I have put up my lambs and deer myself. Cutting every piece of meat and wrapping it. Pheasants, grouse, turkeys, ducks, and geese were hand plucked. I skinned out and gutted rabbits and squirrels before being putting them into the pot. I accidently shot one of my dogs- but didn't kill it- and paid the vet bills that resulted. Years later, I had to give that dog away, but he was beautifully trained. He would respond to hand commands. I understand about putting my own dogs down instead of taking them to the vet- a place they are afraid. I put one of my dogs down myself after she suffered long enough with cancer. I cried. Another, the last one, died from cancer that was diagnosed only a few weeks before. He died with me sitting beside him while I was trying to call a vet to put him down. It should have been done a week before that but my kid wanted to say good bye and he couldn't fit it into his schedule until it was too late anyway. I cried over that dog, too. I was leaving my uncle's farm one night and heard a dog crying. I went and found it. One of the coon hounds was loose and was shot- laying dying in a ditch. A notorious poacher had driven by a little while before, and right there, in front of the barn, only yards from the living room end of the farm house (we were in the kitchen on the other end) he shot the dog from his truck window, knowing full well who he belonged to. Was that making a hard decision or just callousness and cruelty? My uncle cried over that one. "That dog never did nothing to nobody," he said. I took one of my cousin's beagles hunting one day. He had that dog for many years. I took a shot and the dog ran all the way back to the farm house. (I am glad I was on his farm! I never would have found her in the woods of the state game lands or state forests.) I told my cousin she was gun shy. The next time I was at the farm, she was gone. He got rid of her because she was gun shy, even though he never took her hunting and probably never would, he didn't want a dog he couldn't hunt with. I thought he was being absurd, but he didn't shoot her. The dog the Kristie Noem killed was untrainable, according to her. It was untrained and that was Noem's fault. Older dogs don't take younger ones aside and say, "Hey, when you smell a pheasant, point, stupid." We develop that instinct in them by training them, practicing with them, and doing it before the hunting season so they are ready. And, if they aren't ready, we leave them home. That dog that Noem shot could have been given to a home in suburbia where killing chickens isn't a problem. I gotta think that not everyone in South Dakota has a coup out back. Most of the dogs in the SPCA are there not because the dog had a behavioral problem, but because the people wouldn't do the hard work of learning to train a dog and then the hard work of training it. I have heard people say, "Let the dog be a dog." They will be downright belligerent about it. Yeah. Women just love the dog sticking its nose in their crotch. Old ladies, children and people in nice clothes love having a 75 pound excited animal jump up on them. We all love a dog that doesn't know what stay means- heal, sit, down or come- so letting a dog be a dog means it runs onto the highway or kills the neighbor's chickens. Noem didn't need to shoot the goat either. She could have taken it, sold it to a goat farmer that could handle it, or at least humanly send it to the butcher for meat. She wants us to believe that she made the hard decisions. No. We all make those decisions when it is time to put our pets to sleep. The hard decision was to put the time into the animal that animal needed. She didn't do that. She didn't do the hard work. She left it to the older dogs. Being able to do what you have to do, doing the hard stuff, doesn't mean you have to kill a dog or goat because you were too lazy to do the work that is entailed in owning animals. A leader who is in a position to affect policy should be showing us that their decisions prevent problems from becoming extreme- thus avoiding extreme fixes. She isn't showing us she is qualified. She is showing us she isn't. Apr 27 24 09:40 am Link I guess this could be a reason why native American tribes have banned her from their lands. She is simply uncaring. She has no empathy for anyone or anything. Apr 27 24 11:57 am Link Call me a cynic, but consider this: - Kristi Noem is trying to become Trump's VP running mate - This was from an extract that she SPECIFICALLY released in advance of her book - Political "autobiographies" (i.e. "this is who I am / what I stand for" / aka political manifestos) seem to be a requirement for Presidential / VP campaigns - She also tweeted this: "If you want more real, honest, and politically INcorrect stories that’ll have the media gasping, preorder (her upcoming book) 'No Going Back'" I believe that this was a very deliberate story with the purpose of generating lots of negative, what she would call, "Liberal Media" attention. More importantly, she's trying to show Trump and the MAGA crowd, that she's exactly the sort of person that they would WANT as VP. At least that's my take on what I think she's really up to... Apr 27 24 03:10 pm Link Back when I was 6, my Dad took the family to visit his relatives for the summer in Minnesota just east of Fargo. All his cousins and uncle lived on farms. This is back in the days when they didn't have indoor plumbing in their homes. And I wasn't use to drinking warm milk right from the cow. Or watching chickens being beheaded and becoming dinner for the evening. One of the farm's dogs had a new litter and I befriended one of the pups over the summer. When returning home I wanted to bring the pup but my dad said no. A couple weeks later one cousin wrote that the pup stopped eating after I left and died. I still remember that. Apr 27 24 03:15 pm Link I just saw that Noem's tough decision was to kill that dog when it was only 14 months old. If not a puppy, regarding if it had reached its mature size, certainly an adolescent by age and mental maturity. Even if the animal had started training soon after weaning, I would not expect it to be emotionally mature and I would not trust its training to be effective against all temptations. I figure on 16 months to be an age where you notice them going through behavioral changes. It is a good age for them to begin to stop wrecking the furniture, but the battle goes on. I didn't get my last dog until he was nine months old or so. He was certainly better by 16 months. We were walking, just me and him, five miles minimum and up to 15 a day, plus what he did with the wife and kid. I got him over his alpha mentality- mostly- but he still needed to be on a leash everywhere we went. The last thing I needed was him taking off after a deer. Which he would do. I didn't break that behavior by thinking he would copy the older dogs that were with the people I was walking him with. I had to teach him to stop on command and to come back when called, before I had a shot at stopping him from chasing a deer while he was off leash. Dog training never stops. Every time I told him to do something, including speak and shake, I was reinforcing his training. New situations can appear at any age. The adult in the room is responsible for teaching the dog. I was sitting on my front porch one evening, throwing him a halloween decoration (a plastic human calf and foot) that we played with. We also used a medium traffic cone that was his toy. A cop drove by. The cop looked us over and kept going. Then he came back. He stopped. I told the dog to go in the house. He went in. That gave the cop an instant assurance the dog was trained and behaving. The cop told me he was investigating a noise complaint about a dog barking. Well, it wasn't my dog. What could the cop say? The dog was sitting in the living room, looking out the door, waiting for me to tell him we were going to play again. (Yes, from the start I taught them to distinguish between work time and play time.) I had neighbors comment that it was like we had two different dogs. When they saw my wife walk him, he was up ahead of her. He didn't make the leash taut, but it was like he had no concept of what heel meant. When he walked with me, he was at heel. He mostly sat when we stopped, but not always. If someone else was training Noem's dog while she was busy with politics, there would be no reason to expect the dog to follow her commands. The hardest thing about training a dog is training the owners of the dog. I failed to teach my wife to insist on better manners from the dog- though she expects them from me. I have noted I am not permitted to sniff the crotches of our guests and I do come when called. Well, sort of. I could be better trained too. We were working with another dog owner that had a very territorial little bugger. We got together often to socialize the little monster, but even close to the end of my dog's life, that dog would break command when she saw her owner approaching and mine went with her every single time. He stopped when I yelled- and that got me my first serious encounter with a "let dogs be dogs" person. An Amy Cooper type. she was not the first encounter, in general, with someone that thought it is cruel to train a dog, but she was the most horrid. My neighbor across the street use to tell people I had the best trained dog he had ever seen, but he was the worst of the three I have owned and trained since college. The dog before him, I didn't need a leash- ever- except to make the cops happy. She and the one I had to give away would both obey hand signals. So would the last one, but not as well. As bad as the last one was, we could be throwing him a frisbee or ball in the front yard and if the toy went into the street ahead of the dog, he stopped at the curb and waited for us to get it or for permission to get it himself. Currently, I have neighbors down the street that have a black lab they took on for one year. The initial phase of raising the dog to be a service dog. This dog dragged (drags) the woman of the house around the neighborhood. They stop to talk to me. The dog is very excited to play with me and I spend the whole time keeping him from jumping on me and with my finger pushing the dog's rear lip into his mouth so he won't bite me. They kept the dog after the year ended and now the lab is theirs. I seriously doubt if the service dog people wanted him back without basic training and social skills. So now, with the brute at 80 pounds (the woman might be 110) they are having to learn to teach the dog basic manners. Noem didn't give that pup a chance. She turned to a gun (why?) to take care of the problem when she had what appears to be, from her own telling of the story, her first working situation with the dog. And for what reason did she shoot the dog? Because it flushed birds instead of holding a point? When it got to the chickens, whose fault was it that the dog wasn't leashed and under control? Her fault. She had already seen the dog's behavior in the field. Was Noem so out of touch with reality that she could not predict the bad behavior around chickens after seeing bad behavior with pheasants? I like that some of the backlash she is getting is other politicians posing for pictures with their dogs. Apr 27 24 06:43 pm Link Hunter GWPB wrote: How is it possible to "accidently shoot your dog? Apr 27 24 10:14 pm Link Kevin Fair wrote: - Apr 28 24 05:05 am Link Hunter GWPB wrote: Apr 28 24 09:57 am Link Kevin Fair wrote: Re: The quote above Apr 28 24 10:42 am Link In fairness to Kevin Fair, I don't really think he's a Democratic "plant". He just honestly believes what he spouts without doing any basic fact checking before making his wild claims. In this case, daring to compare what life was like under Trump versus Biden. Whether it's the economy, jobs, GDP growth, healthcare, the violent crime rate, or basic human rights and freedoms, etc. Trump just has to tell him that everything was so much better under Trump, and he just blindly believes it. Apr 28 24 10:59 am Link LightDreams wrote: OMG! Apr 28 24 11:56 am Link LightDreams wrote: ^^Look up there^^ Apr 28 24 11:57 am Link Kevin Fair wrote: Kevin Fair wrote: I know, I know. You really WEREN'T suggesting that things were much better under Trump... Apr 28 24 12:36 pm Link What a wacky thread. "Farmer kills dog. Oh she is bad, very bad. I accidentally killed a dog. I'm very good and I know that Farmer is bad, very bad." It just a few city guys left and former farm boys burning the site to the ground. This is how you party. Please don't go out on a high note. You might die from the shock. Apr 28 24 01:17 pm Link LA StarShooter wrote: - Apr 28 24 03:41 pm Link Kevin Fair wrote: previous posts in italics and is true in subsequent sections pertaining to his last post directed at me Apr 28 24 03:41 pm Link But, I bet you will unhesitatingly vote for a serial sex abuser and criminally negligent clown. Can you say the United States has been in better shape since biden <sic> has been in office? Was the US in worst condition when the clown was in office compared to now? The United States is far better off than when the self-serving, self-enriching, Putin patsy was in office. We currently have a leader that does not tear down our country for the sake of his own survival. Apr 28 24 03:42 pm Link It is good to know that you admit every unintentional incident you have ever been involved with has been your negligence. The opinion of a guy that has to sleep with a gun and carry one everywhere he goes, is negligence just waiting to happen. Red Herring? I've been in 3 car accidents where the other driver was negligent. Can you grasp the difference? That is your claim. That doesn't mean you didn't do something to cause the accident, but, because of the circumstances, the other person was judged at fault. And the rest of your non-vehicle accidents? I once had a boss that told us we were to avoid accidents at all costs, including taking a different road to avoid an accident that hadn’t yet happened. Really? I am supposed to predict the day, place and time of an accident and then change my route despite the fact that my Time Machine hasn’t been invented? Do you not understand the meaning of negligence? "Failure to take proper care in doing something." Per your retort, most any accident can be judged to be negligence because there is always something that someone could have should have would have done differently. But, you determined, without knowledge that it was not an accident, that it was negligence, simply because a firearm was involved, even though you know, by your own admission, that accidents with firearms can happen. That is right wing bullshit showing through. Accident: "an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury." It was your argumentative intent to deem it negligence and eliminate the possibility of an accident. As you said, accidents can happen to someone without negligence. There are a lot of other ways firearm accidents can happen without negligence, but it would appear you are unwilling to accept the possibility of a gun discharging, say, as a result of a fall. But, per you, that would be negligence because the person who fell didn't have proper footing. My first day of work in Idaho, I met a coworker for a carpool. We were going over the mountain, and a mule deer went across in front of us. We were looking at it when the second mule deer came out and we hit it. The car fishtailed. The rear wheels dropped off of the road and down over the edge. There were no guard rails. The driver managed to keep control and the from wheels pulled us back on the road. That wasn’t an accident, right? That was negligence because we both should have know that when one deer crosses in front of you, you slow down quickly, and watch not where the mule deer went, but were it cam from, because there might be another one following. It was negligence because the driver failed to proper care? Or, was it an accident? It is not unreasonable to project the unintended consequence of statements like yours. That is why we are hearing things about presidential orders to commit murders and coups. The extremism are among the possible results of poorly thought out positions such as Presidential immunity and that there are no accidental firearm discharges. (Since the bogus perception of a bad gun has already been eliminated.) You have used logical fallacies, denial and [b]evasion[b] through out your posts. Your question regarding a red herring is more of the same. It is a deflection. I pointed out the logical extrapolation of your words, and I made a true statement because under an examination looking for negligence, we will find negligence. You calling my comment a red herring doesn’t make it a red herring. Calling it a red herring is a red herring. BTW, what exactly is proper care? Is it flawless care? Apr 28 24 03:43 pm Link There is a gun in my bedroom, not in the bed, your grasping now. I was around 10 when my dad bought me my first shotgun. I've carried a gun around the last 30 years. I've never had one go off without it being planned. No negligence with me and guns in all these years. I must have been taught right as a kid. This is another example of your poor reading comprehension and making things say what you want, rather than what they state. "The opinion of a guy that has to sleep with a gun ….” To play your stupid little game, please show me where I said it was in your bed. Tell me that gun isn't within your reach at night. Like on the night stand? I keep a old WInchester 1200 shotgun in my bedroom, and my EDC pistol is on my nightstand if not on my hip. https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post … st19985433 Apr 28 24 03:43 pm Link Why start a thread about farm life when all you planned on doing was sprouting a lot of liberal bullshit? It was actually a good read until then. The kettle saying the pot has soot on it? https://www.modelmayhem.com/forums/post/984223 Paraphrasing the title for your purposes of distortion doesn’t mean that the thread is not relative to the title. “The realities of farm life” are not what Noem claims them to be, in my experience. That is what the thread is about and if you need a longer title then take it up with the mods. You should have had a pretty good idea what current event the thread was going to represent from the very first line in the body of the thread. So, you think Noem shooting her dog is liberal bullshit? What specifically was liberal bullshit? You thought it was a good read, including the self incrimination that I had accidentally hurt my dog, until you got to the factual portion about Noem? Then you had to go back and spout out your right wing bullshit and accusations? Every criticism I made of Noem was related to her incompetence, laziness, negligence or the conservative bullshit conservatives believe. Conservatives have to make the hard choices to shoot a goat exhibiting goat behavior and an untrained puppy? They have to live on a farm where three horses had to be put down? Yet putting down horses isn't a hard decision at all. It may be heart breaking, but that is doing something that has to be done and everyone of us do the unpleasant things that have to be done. We fire employees, lay people off, close the business, file for divorce, put down the cat. dog, horse, mule, …. Oh, and big ones that most of know is our duty: Testify honestly and avoid obstructing justice, etc.. Yeah, Republicans make that hard decision. Farm life doesn't make you into a person that can make the hard decisions, life does. Guns, do make it easier to do the unpleasant things that some gun owners think has to be done, like killing your wife and three of four kids in Oklahoma. But, despite all the figures that say people who live in homes with guns are less safe, that must all be liberal bullshit. Or is it conservative who simply refuse to accept the truth. Maybe, the hard decision is to reduce the ease of getting a gun- but we all know damn well that is a hard decision conservatives cannot face. Conservatives that have opted to stay on the farm want people off of the farm to think it is a hard life, but many, many jobs are hard. In the meantime, people have been fleeing the farms for decades- more than a century- because there is more to life than what farms have to offer. Why are most small towns and farm communities shrinking when the population is growing? Because, in many ways, life sucks there. In the meantime, a stupid, clown President caused farmers to loose significant market share with an easy to win trade war that he lost- and AMERICANS paid the tariffs on what was imported into this country- not the Chinese, like the serial liar in chief at the time would say. In conclusion, woundinging my dog was an accident because it was "an unfortunate incident that happen[ed] unexpectedly and unintentionally, … resulting in damage or injury.” I will acquiesce to it being negligence because of my "failure to take In the meantime, thank you for providing the ammunition to further illustrate how Noem, as a leading conservative that lacks empathy, foresight, due diligence, leadership skills, competence and misunderstands the American people beyond a little segment of people who are proud to have killed their dogs. Also, your reasoning is illustrative that conservatives should be condemning Noem for those actions of negligence. To save yourself some aggravation in the future, when I write something, be forewarned, most of the time it will slant left because I am not cold hearted and I don’t eschew the facts. Also, nwprophoto use to challenge me on all sorts of topics that I knew nothing about, nor cared about, but his challenges caused me to research the nonsense and falsehoods he was presenting and in every subject where I would have previously fallen right of center, I went left, because that is where the truth and the facts took me. I suggest that if you don’t like my opinions, you shouldn't read my stuff. Save us both the aggravation. If you were interested in balanced information you would read the spectrum of news instead of swimming in your bubble. And if you were interesting in discussion, you would discuss things. Please feel free to regale us with your non-political farm life stories if you want to divert the thread in that direction. Apr 28 24 03:44 pm Link  Apr 29 24 07:47 am Link I thought the beginning of this thread was interesting and insightful until I got the Noem part where it took a turn downwards. Why does everything have to turn into a negative political rant? If you're going to respond, please remember brevity as I don't have time to read novel length answers. Apr 29 24 09:34 am Link I briefly worked on a farm back in the early 1980s, harvesting potatoes and doing a few other things. It's tough, you start work at about 7 and finish at 5. A woman I was working with told me how she started doing farm work as a Land Girl during World War Two. May 11 24 04:40 am Link TDSImages wrote: Because positive political rants are not possible given the state of both parties. May 11 24 07:53 am Link |
