Dear Secretary Noem,

I hope this letter finds you well, perhaps out on the prairie practicing your famously compassionate approach to animal stewardship. I recently finished your deeply moving, Pulitzer-adjacent memoir—the one where you bravely demonstrated the true frontier spirit by turning your dog Cricket into a cautionary tale. Truly inspirational. I had no idea a now sitting Secretary could take such a bold stand against the menace of household pets.

Anyway, I’m writing because I, too, find myself with a canine who is insufficiently respectful of my personal space, my farm, and occasionally, even my taint.

Her name is Daisy. She’s a border collie with the energy level of a televangelist on Adderall and an obsessive fixation on her ball that borders on neurotic. If I’m not paying attention to her, she demands it. If I am paying attention to her, she also demands it. Just last week, in her frenzy to retrieve her slobber-soaked soccer ball, she scratched me in a place no dog should ever access.

We’ve paid thousands—literal thousands—in training, and yet she still looks at the command “place” like it’s a suggestion from a waiter about the soup of the day. The second I leave the room, she abandons her station and goes in search of anything she can get her grubby little paws on. She eats rotten tomatoes straight off my farm like they don’t cause diarrhea, which inevitably and unfortunately results in intermittent explosions from the back end.

After she got spayed, she became so unhinged that she busted her own stitches open and had to be sutured again. At this point, I’m convinced Daisy is powered exclusively by a cocktail of cocaine and caffeine.

This brings me to why I’m seeking your—how should I put it—unique expertise.

Given your experience with managing difficult dogs—or, more specifically, ending the management process entirely—I wondered if you might know of any good gravel pits in my area. Purely for research, of course! Also, what caliber firearm do you recommend for someone looking to achieve the kind of efficiency you so poetically failed to demonstrate with Cricket? I remember you required two shots, and with Trump’s shitty economy being what it is, I’m trying to keep things to one round. Fiscal responsibility starts at home, amiright?

Let me be clear: I would never actually harm Daisy. I love her too much. Or, more accurately, my family does. But since you’re clearly the nation’s foremost animal-rights activist, I figured you might help illuminate the path of responsible pet ownership. Or whatever it is you call what you did.

Thank you again for your profoundly uplifting book. It has given me the courage to reach out to you—someone who has done more for pet-related political satire than perhaps any politician in American history.

Warmest regards,
A Fellow “Rural American Farmer”