South Dakota
Letting go is difficult after going afield with a good dog • South Dakota Searchlight
Mary knew it was time before I did. Or maybe I should say she admitted it before I could.
Giving up on a dog, even when it’s pretty clearly time, can be difficult. And I needed some help from my wife, and from our vet, in recognizing the obvious.
So the time for Rosie, our 14-year-old springer spaniel, came one day last week, after a two-year decline that accelerated over the last six months and especially the last six or eight weeks.
Mary was home sick, so I sat alone with Rosie in an examination room at the animal clinic, talking to her and stroking her head and side as she drifted off, giving in peacefully to the sedative the vet had injected a few minutes earlier. Then I started to sob as I touched the call button summoning the vet and her assistant, who was pushing a cart that would take Rosie into the room where the final drug would be administered.
“I’m so sorry,” the vet said. “We’ll take good care of her.”
I left Rosie in their gentle hands and wept my way out of the exam room, down the hall, through the lobby and on to my pickup.
And when I settled in behind the wheel, I felt Rosie’s leash in the pocket of my jacket and acknowledged through my tears that a dog that had been such an important “is” in my life had become a “was.”
I do not mean to overstate the emotions of this. Obviously, the loss of a dog is not the same as the loss of a human being. But it is the loss of a life. A life that mattered.
For most of her 14 years with us, Rosie was a high-energy force of nature in our home and out across the wild lands of our state, leading me with the gift of her nose through mucky cattails and dense upland grasses and deep-woods aspen groves.
East River. West River. Missouri River country. Black Hills highlands. We explored them all, wet and dry, windy and calm, hot and cold and quite a bit in-between.
She loved best the kind of difficult-to-traverse coverts that Pennsylvania writer Charles Fergus called “thick and uncivil sorts of places,” and I got to know them better and love them more deeply by sharing them with her.
Oh, the things you can learn by going afield with a good dog. Magical, enduring things, about the outdoors, about the dog, about yourself.
We watched more sundowns together than I could count, usually when a bird hunt was done, we were both tired and fulfilled and often enjoying the added gift of coyote song. Rosie always raised her ears and cocked her head at the music, listening intently as if trying to decipher some canine-encrypted code.
The call of the wild? Of course. And she understood it much better than I did.
Oh, the things you can learn by going afield with a good dog. Magical, enduring things, about the outdoors, about the dog, about yourself.
But she wasn’t just a strong bird dog. She also was a talented backyard escape artist and unreconstructed garbage gut with a special affinity for kids’ sweat socks, the sweatier and dirtier the better.
I’ll skip the undignified details about how those socks, once swallowed, worked their way out, one way or the other. But Rosie processed a dozen or so over the years, with great effort but without requiring emergency room care.
She was a licker, not a fighter, that dog, known in our family and throughout our neighborhood for her sweet, outgoing personality. And she was especially fond and tolerant of the 19 grandchildren — now ranging in age from a gainfully employed college graduate to a toddler — who got to bask in her affection and be her pal.
I bought her from a kennel out in the James River breaks when she was eight weeks old and officially named her James River Rose. But I rarely called her anything but Rosie.
She was the most headstrong and challenging dog I’ve had to train, or to control in the field, but also the most athletic and relentless on bird scent. And despite the occasional adrenaline-driven indiscretion, at her core Rosie aimed to please.
She was six months old when she flushed and retrieved her first prairie grouse and a few weeks older when she did the same with her first rooster pheasant. And a year or two later, she led me to three ruffed grouse — a noteworthy limit on the first day I ever saw a Black Hills ruffy — in a disorderly gathering of willow and aspen and birch deep in a spring-fed hollow up off Tinton Road south of Spearfish.
She made a four-hour round-trip drive for a two-hour hunt worth it every time, even if all we trailed and flushed were a couple of hen pheasants. “No shot, girl,” I would say, and I praised her just as effusively as if we’d bagged three roosters.
She was puzzled whenever I missed a bird, ecstatic when I hit one and even in the most inhospitable of cover rarely missed a retrieve.
When we weren’t hunting pheasants or grouse, we were often up on the trails in the forest above our house in Rapid City, where Rosie maintained her nosy optimism, fervently believing — despite overwhelming odds to the contrary — that there was a pheasant or grouse waiting to be flushed around the next bend.
Never a slacker, she stayed blue-collared busy, whether snuffling her way through a Lyman County sorghum field or — in her younger days, at least — frantically chasing butterflies and even bird shadows back and forth across the backyard grass.
She was unremittingly upbeat and never failed to lift my spirits, even at the lowest of times.
Then came the decline, slow at first, much faster near the end. It was nothing out of the ordinary: an old dog with a bunch of old-dog ailments that finally reached her time.
And an old-dog lover who needed some help in admitting it.
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RAPID CITY, S.D. (KOTA) – The South Dakota Supreme Court has upheld the convictions of a Pennington County man sentenced for threatening a Box Elder resident with a handgun during a 2025 home invasion.
In a unanimous decision, the court affirmed the convictions of Chris David Kujawa, who was found guilty of first-degree burglary and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. A Pennington County jury convicted Kujawa in May 2025, and he was sentenced to concurrent 12-year prison terms.
According to trial testimony, Kujawa forced his way into a Box Elder home, accused the homeowner of stealing property and pointed a handgun at the victim’s head while threatening to kill him. The victim testified Kujawa also threatened his wife.
Kujawa appealed the convictions, arguing the trial court improperly limited questions about the victim’s prior convictions and incorrectly responded to a question from jurors during deliberations.
The Supreme Court rejected those arguments, finding that any error related to the victim’s prior conviction did not affect the outcome of the case and that the judge properly directed jurors to review instructions that accurately stated the law.
“The Supreme Court’s decision affirms the jury’s verdict and recognizes the strength of the evidence presented at trial,” Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a statement.
The Attorney General’s Office represented the state during the appeal.
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See video of Devil’s Gulch, chosen as a day trip for USA’s 250th
See a video of Devil’s Gulch Park, a great day trip with a storied past in South Dakota to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday this year.
Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson said he does not know what’s next for him after his failed bid for South Dakota governor, and while he’s helping one of the remaining Republican candidates, he does not plan to make a public endorsement unless he’s asked.
South Dakota Searchlight sat down with Johnson for an interview in Sioux Falls. He did not say which of the remaining candidates he’s assisting.
Johnson said his campaign was affected by a political environment hostile to candidates with experience in Congress.
“It’s not a good time to be connected to Washington, D.C.,” Johnson said.
He finished third in the four-way June 2 Republican primary behind Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden and Gov. Larry Rhoden, who will face each other in a July 28 runoff election. Johnson finished ahead of state House Speaker Jon Hansen. The spread between first and last place was 10 percentage points.
Johnson will remain a U.S. representative until January. He has no specific plan for his future after that, other than remaining in Mitchell, where his wife has a business and one of their three sons is still in high school.
He did not rule out a return to politics, but said his “heart isn’t set on that,” adding that his motivation has always been “to do something” rather than “to be something.”
“It’s about the impact,” he said.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What happened with the SD governor’s race?
Well, it’s not a good time to be connected to Washington, D.C. Nine of my congressional colleagues have lost in the last year. When running for higher office, that’s an unusual number.
It used to be thought that being in the U.S. House was a good place to run for the Senate or for governor from. That’s really not the case anymore. Clearly, there’s a lot of dysfunction in D.C., and particularly if you are a more Reagan-minded Republican, a more establishment-viewed Republican, that can be hard to overcome in a primary.
And I’d note, we were ahead the whole race — three weeks out, four weeks out, we were 16 points up.
It was really the negative ads calling me a “RINO” [Republican in Name Only] or a liberal that, in those last two weeks, just cratered our numbers. And we saw that in our polling. People were increasingly saying, when we were asking them why they were voting for somebody else, “Well, you know, Dusty’s a liberal. Dusty’s a RINO.” And we probably did not do a good enough job of combating those negative ads. They really, really worked.
Why didn’t you target Doeden for criticism during the campaign?
Early on, particularly, it showed that there wasn’t a lot of overlap between Doeden voters and Johnson voters. If people were thinking about voting for me, they were also thinking about voting for Larry.
Now, that changed as the campaign went on. And indeed, as the negative ads against me in the last two weeks worked and took 10 points off our number, overwhelmingly, those people moved to Doeden. And that would have been fine if we would have made the runoff, but we fell just a couple thousand votes short of making the runoff.
I would have felt great about our chances against Toby in the runoff. But in the end, that’s not what happened.
Do you regret the votes you took in Congress that your opponents alleged were out of step with President Trump?
Number one, to the extent that they were principled votes, I don’t think you can ever regret your principles, right?
I mean, voting to certify the 2020 election was what the Constitution, the plain and clear reading of the Constitution, demanded of me. And so my political life might have been a little easier if I would have ignored the Constitution, but I’m just not capable of doing that.
The interesting thing is the attacks that had the most negative effect on me weren’t even the votes where I deviated from the party norms.
I mean, one attack that was really effective was saying Dusty Johnson voted with Ilhan Omar — that’s a liberal congresswoman from Minnesota — to defund ICE. It took us the longest time to figure out what they even meant by that. And that was an attack that Larry and Toby were making.
Near as I can tell, I voted against a Joe Biden spending package. I thought the Joe Biden spending package was too liberal. I voted against it. They’re, as a result, alleging that I voted to defund ICE. Ilhan Omar voted against that package because it wasn’t liberal enough for her.
I voted with the overwhelming majority of Republicans and all conservatives, but that clearly conservative vote was still distorted, and I’m not complaining about it. I mean, I think we all know that goes on in politics. I have no bitterness. I don’t have any regret.
I mean, at some point, we know that these primaries are going to be hard-fought. I’m not a sore loser. Toby and Larry won, and I didn’t.
And I think one of the reasons that I can handle the loss so well is that my motivator has never been to be something. It’s always been to do something. And we still have an opportunity to work together to improve South Dakota education, improve South Dakota public safety.
I don’t have to be governor for our state to make great things happen. And we deserve a great state. We deserve a great governor. And I’m committed to those things even if I’m not going to be the guy.
Rhoden and Hansen supported new laws that fund homeowner property tax reductions with higher sales taxes. Your campaign messaging criticized them for the sales tax increases. Was that not effective? What was the feedback?
That messaging was fantastically effective.
I mean, the campaign started with Larry and Dusty in a statistical tie at 29%. And once people understood more about the three sales tax increases, Larry went down to 23. We went up to 33. And Larry never fully recovered from that. Rather, I think he finished at 25.
And so the idea that the sales tax increases weren’t an effective differentiator isn’t supported by the data.
And indeed, I think that was part of what caused Toby’s run-up — the outside advertising, particularly. It was far harsher on Larry and Jon than anything we had designed or approved.
[The sales tax messaging] put a lid on Larry and Jon’s support. They just couldn’t get above 23 or 25 points. And when the negative ads calling me a liberal took 10 points off me, those voters couldn’t really go to Larry and Jon because they didn’t trust them on taxes. And so they were willing to go to Toby, who they viewed as a guy talking about big vision in the same way that our campaign was talking about big vision.
I don’t think that necessarily means that Toby Doeden’s going to be a great governor. I just think the voters in a multi-candidate field were having to figure out who they could vote for, as they were learning things about the other candidates they didn’t like.
Who will you vote for in the runoff?
Well, there has been a bit of a controversy this campaign season about people being endorsed by folks they didn’t want to be endorsed by. And so no candidate has asked me to publicly endorse them.
I’ve had multiple conversations with both Toby and Larry. When they’ve asked, I provided them my honest feedback.
One of the campaigns has asked me to help in some other ways, and I’m doing that. But I’m not going to announce that publicly unless they ask. I think it would be unfair to them.
Again, I called and reached out to both Toby and Larry and congratulated them because, again, they’re winners and I don’t have any intention of being a sore loser.
Listen, this is politics. We’ve all won in life, and we’ve all lost. Winning beats the heck out of losing, but I still know South Dakota has got great opportunities in the future.
You and your team worked hard, including using money from your political action committees, to get legislators elected that align with your agenda. That happened, but you lost. Isn’t that ironic? How does that happen?
Because the Republican primary electorate is hardwired to view attacks like “career politician” and “RINO” as radioactive. And although we certainly talked a lot about, I think, the unfortunate tax increases that Jon and Larry put into place, we were trying to make an argument about policy, right?
My differences with them were policy. Those were very different than the insults that the other candidates leveled at me, and just honestly, their negative ads were more effective than anything the outside groups were running on my behalf.
But no, I don’t think there’s any irony that Larry and Toby will have a more functional Legislature because of my hard work. I want South Dakota to have a good Legislature, regardless of who was governor.
I’m not interested in a functional South Dakota only if Dusty Johnson’s governor — I love the state, regardless.
Is there room for bipartisan “workhorses,” rather than “show horses,” in today’s Republican Party?
Certainly, election results from the last year have shown that it is really hard to get elected if you focus on common ground building.
Again, nine of my colleagues in the House have lost their runs for higher office just in the last year. And that’s much higher than has historically been normal.
But I still think honest people, principled people, are still going to do the right thing, even if maybe the political marketplace doesn’t reward them for it.
Did you seek President Trump’s endorsement? Would it have made a difference?
I think we’ve seen, like in Iowa with Randy Feenstra — also a very hard-working, policy-focused member of the House, a close ally of mine — he received the Trump endorsement and lost his governor’s race.
And I think it just goes to show that even with the Trump endorsement, if you’re viewed as somebody who’s more interested in working together than fighting, the race is going to be a little different. And we knew that going in.
Within the “America First” movement, we’re now seeing more influential figures like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens break with President Trump. What do you think is going to come of the Republican Party?
It does seem like both parties are being led by ever angrier and louder voices. That is not going to make for good outcomes in this country. But the fever will break.
I mean, we have been here before.
You look at the turn of the last century where you couldn’t find a newspaper that wasn’t a party organ.
I mean, it was the Mitchell Daily Republican — that was the name of the paper, literally. Hundreds of papers had partisan names and thousands of them were party organs, even if not by title.
And frankly, Americans had segregated themselves into ethnic and ideological ghettos — very, very tribal. And then something happened, the fever broke, and Americans decided to have more of a common identity. And they sought out platforms that were more interested in facts than in spin.
And I think the yellow journalism of the early 1900s was every bit as dangerous as the yellow journalism of today’s cable news. I think they’re both toxic to the healthy functioning of a free society.
But the fever broke then, and the fever will break now.
The good book says that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. And I don’t know when that happens, but I’m a believer in American exceptionalism. I don’t think these things happen by accident. I don’t think this is just another country.
I think if good people continue to stay engaged, the fever will break, and we’re going to get back to the kind of country that my kids deserve.
Do you regret any of your positioning in regard to President Trump, either being too aligned or not enough?
Well, I supported President Trump when I thought he was right.
There were certainly disagreements he and I had on things like invading Greenland, the Qatari jet, and certifying the 2020 election. But, I mean, at some point, if you’re not going to be authentic to your views, then why run, why serve?
Certainly, the president and I agreed far more than we disagreed. And we never had any particular problem. I mean, he knew that I had different views on trade, that we have different views on NATO and on the role of free trade agreements and security agreements. That never bothered him.
This was a guy who invited me to Mar-a-Lago. He had me over to the Oval Office. We had lots of productive meetings because we were both focused on getting things done. And no two people agree on everything.
I think that’s one reason that he was reluctant to endorse an incumbent governor in this race. And it is unusual that he did not endorse an incumbent governor, and I think part of that is because he and I had such a good working relationship.
What do you plan to do next?
I don’t have any idea. I love this state. My wife’s business is in Mitchell. We’ve got a 14-year-old in Mitchell schools, and our oldest is at South Dakota State University. Our middle child’s at the University of South Dakota. And so South Dakota’s home.
Votes that cost Johnson in the primary will stand up well to the scrutiny of history
I want to lead a life of consequence. I want to have an impact. I want to do things to improve this state.
Of course, you can do that in the private sector. You can do that in business. You can do that in nonprofit. You can do that in government.
I don’t have any idea what’s next, but I know leaders eat last, and we’ve got a lot of really talented professionals who are on the campaign, who love this state, and they want to find a job here, and I’m working hard to make sure that they can find a job.
And then we’ve got an incredibly talented and committed team on the official side, who work for the United States House, our office. They’ll have jobs through the end of the year, but they are so talented that, I mean, I’ll feel duty-bound to try to make sure that some great enterprise is able to hire them so that they can keep making the state great.
Does Dusty Johnson have a political future?
Oh, it’s so hard to say.
I think two weeks after an election is the wrong time for me to decide. We don’t even have all our highway signs down yet. And so I don’t know what the future holds.
Certainly, there are many examples of successful elected officials, such as John Thune and Bill Janklow, coming back after a loss. But my heart isn’t set on that.
Again, I’m more focused on doing things rather than being things. It’s about the impact. And so I don’t know.
If you told me that in my 70s, I was on the school board or in the state Legislature, I wouldn’t be shocked at all.
South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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