Space Dogs is a present from Krushchev to Caroline Kennedy, a puppy named Pushok. He finds the other Kennedy pets and tells them his story. Three years earlier, in Moscow 1960, a strange man showed up, who was catching street dogs and taking them away. Once he tried to catch a dog named Strelka, but she ran away with her friend, the rat Venya. Then, Strelka went to go dig for bones and Venya went to a pay telephone to get some money. Meanwhile, while Strelka was running from the strange man, at a local circus there was a bad situation at
Ham (chimpanzee) of Pathology for necropsy. Following the necropsy, the plan was to have him stuffed and placed on display at the Smithsonian, following Soviet precedent with pioneering space dogs Belka and Strelka. However, this plan was abandoned after a negative public reaction. Ham's remains, minus the skeleton, were buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Colonel John Stapp gave the eulogy at the memorial service. The skeleton is held in the collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Ham's backup, Minnie, was the only female chimpanzee trained for the Mercury program. After her role