Laika herself was a Soviet Dog that belonged to the Soviet Union, meaning that the Soviet Union itself was the first country to send the first dog into space, and was launched on November 3, 1957.
Because in 1957, since before the first man (Yuri Gagarin) was launched into space, which was first attempted on April 12, 1961, we didn’t actually know from whether or not a human being could be able to survive in space, and in order for them to prove and know that a human could be able to survive in space, they then subsequently launched a dog out into space instead of a human.
