'Satisfied puppy killer': Kristi Noem's 'dog-killing' story resurfaces amid ICE murder row

On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother was fatally shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The shooting took place at East 34th Street and Portland Avenue just blocks away from where a Minneapolis officer murdered George Floyd in 2020.The incident not only revived the city's history of killings by federal agents but also sparked off weeks of protests against the agency and the Trump administration. The video of the entire incident has been shared far and wide online, buzzing social media condemning the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and calls for its closure. While the world has been reeling with the brutal incident, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem characterised Good's actions as an "act of domestic terrorism". This is one of the many comments from the Trump administration whose officials including Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, have all sided with the agency in the act.Recently, in an interview with CNN Noem appeared to smirk as she admitted that the ICE agent who killed Renee Good may have called her a "f****** b****" moments after fatally shooting her.When asked if it was agent Jonathan Ross' voice calling Renee Good the vile words, Noem replied: “I can‘t determine which one it is, but it could be, sir,” before giving a brief smile. Her blatant and off-putting reaction disappointed the viewers who have not been happy with the DHS Secretary for a while now. “That smirk at the end is the smile of a satisfied puppy killer,” wrote one user on X. “Note Noem’s smile at the end," added another."Satisfied puppy killer" isn't just a random comment, it refers to an anecdote from Noem's memoir in which she described killing her 14-month-old dog, Cricket, because the puppy was difficult to train. Yes, being blasé about killing and death isn't new to Noem. “Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” wrote the former South Dakota governor in her book 'No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward' published in May 2024. She added that the female dog had an "aggressive personality" and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant. While she hoped to calm the young pooch down and teach her how to behave, she was unfortunately going, “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”.She wrote that she "hated the dog" whom she described as "a picture of joy." It had proved itself “untrainable”, “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.“At that moment,” Noem said, “I realised I had to put her down.” “It was not a pleasant job,” she wrote, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done.”Incredibly, Noem's tale of slaughter did not end there. She also wrote about her family's male goat that was nasty and mean”, because it had not been castrated. It smelled “disgusting, musky, rancid” and “loved to chase” Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.She decided to kill the untamed goat the same way she had just killed Cricket, the dog.In the book, she added that she includes the story of killing her dog to illustrate her willingness, in politics as well as in South Dakota life. She also reflected on her sharing of peculiar information, adding: “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.”