Putin’s Dog is the New Laika

Leave it to Vladimir Putin to stir up echoes of the Soviet Union by testing out Russia’s new Global Navigation Satellite System on his dog. Fifty years after Soviet pup Laika blasted into space, the prime minister used his black Labrador, Koni, as a guinea pig for Russia’s answer to the US Global Positioning System. As he slipped the locating collar onto Koni, First Deputy Premier Sergei Ivanov explained that if the dog doesn’t move-—“if it, say, lies down in a puddle”—the equipment would go into standby mode. “My dog isn’t a piglet,” Putin interrupted. “She doesn’t lie in puddles.”