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Mighty Laika Rose. The day-to-day suspense of survival in space lost nothing from the fact that the space pup changed names with almost every orbit. The New York Times, which devoted a special inside column to the tales of wags, at first identified it as Kudryavka. a female name meaning Curly. The Times then decided the dog was a male named Limonchik (Little Lemon). Even in Moscow, reported a Baltimore Sun correspondent, an economics journal called the dog Malyshka, while Evening Moscow claimed that its real name was Zhuchka. Most papers finally agreed that sputpup was a female named Laika after its breed. But, though they use the word regularly in covering dog shows, newspapers and v:ire services were not so indelicate as to call it a bitch. City-room funsters showed less restraint in gags about the contents of the next Sputnik (a fireplug) or a quote from Laika's earthbound boy friend ("Someone up there loves me"). After perpetrating such lines as "The chow jumped over the moon" and "How the mighty Laika rose," the Chicago American noted: 'The Russian sputpup isn't the first dog in the sky. That honor belongs to the dog star. But we're getting too Sirius." Even Manhattan's usually long-faced Communist Daily Worker bayed in a headline:
EVERY DOGNIK HAS ITS DAYNIK. Said the story below: "It's a case of the dog wagging the world." Scenting a new trend in Soviet science, the Chicago Sun-Times'?, Columnist Irv Kupcinet declared: "The Russians are raising a new breed of dog—Moongrel." The week's longest reach into the void: when the Russians shoot cows into outer space, it will be the herd shot 'round the world.