Mitt Romney says his dog scandal doesn’t compare to Kristi Noem’s: ‘I didn’t shoot my dog’

Mitt Romney may have infamously tied a dog in a kennel to the roof of his car for a cross-country trip but at least he didn’t shoot it, the Utah Republican senator said, as outrage over the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, telling her story of killing a 14-month-old hunting dog continued to ripple through US politics.

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Romney said, on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as reported by HuffPost.

Noem’s story of killing Cricket the dog – and an unnamed goat – is contained in her forthcoming book, the now somewhat ironically titled No Going Back.

The Guardian obtained a copy of the book and reported the story of the dog and the goat last week, setting off a political firestorm and casting into doubt Noem’s chances of being named Donald Trump’s Republican presidential running mate in this election, despite being one of his most enthusiastic acolytes.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, after describing how Cricket, a female wirehair pointer, ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbour’s chickens.

Noem wrote that she took Cricket to a gravel pit and shot her. She then killed the goat – with two shotgun blasts separated by a walk back to her truck for more shells – in the same pit, because the goat smelled bad and was aggressive because it had not been castrated, the governor said.

Romney was the Republican nominee for president in 2012. During the campaign, he was dogged by controversy over the story of how he once transported a family dog, Seamus the Irish setter, on the roof of his car on a 12-hour trip, terrifying the animal.

His remark this week about not having eaten a dog was a dig at Barack Obama, the Democrat who beat him in 2012, and who wrote in one of