Model of the Vostok craft which carried Yuri Gagarin into space in April of 1961.
A Vostok had earlier carried a number of stray dogs as living test pilots. Laika, from an earlier mission, is famous. Vostok carried Pchelka and Mushka to their tragic deaths as its reentry rockets failed to stop firing and they burned up on reentry. Three later dogs survived before Gagarin was sent up.
Photo by my grandfather David C. Cook. Scanned from an unlabeled Kodachrome slide, datestamped June 1969. Slide W4 14 in an unlabeled slide cartridge.