Governor Noem of South Dakota’s odds of being President Trump’s vice-presidential pick are plummeting after she described shooting a goat and an “aggressive” dog. Having spent my early years as a veterinary technician, I love animals, but would urge others to withhold judgment and reflect.

Ms. Noem, in her forthcoming book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move Forward,” describes an “aggressive” 14-month-old wirehaired pointer. It drove a neighbor to tears by slaughtering their chickens “one at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another.”

When Ms. Noem tried to get the dog under control, it “whipped around and tried to bite me.” She “hated that dog.” It was “untrainable,” “less than worthless” as a hunting companion, and “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” So, it had to go.

The dog was an “assassin,” Ms. Noem wrote, one that ruined hunts by going “out of her mind” and “chasing” birds rather than — as the breed’s name suggests — pointing to the prey in silence. The governor tried training and even an electronic collar to deliver mild, corrective shocks without success.

“I guess if I were a better politician,” Ms. Noem wrote, “I wouldn’t tell the story here.” She might have at least used a trick of the veterinary business: To avoid getting attached to animals, we don’t name them. But Ms. Noem identifies the North Dakota Poultry Cruncher as Cricket.

In the excerpt of her book obtained by the Guardian, the goat Ms. Noem put down is unnamed. That it was “nasty and mean” and “loved to chase” and knock down children, makes it unsympathetic. Plus, it was a farm animal, which city-dwellers don’t see as stand-ins for their loyal pooches.

Like the boy in “Old Yeller” who shoots his beloved dog to end its suffering, Ms. Noem found killing the animals “unpleasant.” But she said her actions, performed at a gravel pit, are a metaphor for being willing to do “difficult, messy, and ugly” things.

Had it not been Ms. Noem’s finger on the trigger, it would have been one of my former colleagues depressing the plunger of a syringe. Ms. Noem’s critics are comfortable with that sort of death for animals that pose a threat or are just inconvenient: Sanitized and unseen behind closed doors.

Rural life is different. President Theodore Roosevelt, a rancher in the Dakota Badlands, shot a dog that attacked him. “We love animals,” Ms. Noem wrote on X in response to the Guardian story, “but tough decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Sadly, we just had to put down three horses a few weeks ago that had been in our family for 25 years.”

“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” is the title of a 1969 film because, indeed, they do. Had Ms. Noem pawned off the job on a veterinarian, it wouldn’t be a story. Since — like President Cleveland, who carried out death sentences against two men as sheriff rather than order someone else to do it — says something about her character.

I’m probably the only pundit who has administered a lethal injection, who knew technicians that put healthy-but-unwanted pets down at shelters. Thanksgiving to New Year’s is known as “The Euthanasia Season” in the veterinary field because people don’t want their holidays spoiled by an inconvenient dog or cat. Would those owners be so quick to sign a death warrant if they had to pull the trigger themselves?

Mr. Trump, gleeful about doing things that the political class insists he shouldn’t, will be watching how Ms. Noem handles the Cricket kerfuffle. Don’t be surprised if he likes what he sees and decides that a running mate who doesn’t shrink from doing the “difficult, messy, and ugly” things is just the ticket.