YOU'VE GOT TAIL

On Oct 6, 1964, a Tuesday, Myrtle Chee walked into The Straits Times' office at Times House in Kim Seng Road with a photograph of a dog.

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It was her pet, Peggy, a fawn-colored boxer with white patches, which had gone missing three days before.

Myrtle, 15, a Methodist Girls' School student, wanted to offer a reward to anyone who found Peggy or could give information leading to her discovery, the paper reported in a short article on Page 4, nestling it between cinema advertisements and a lead story on Mr. Devan Nair agreeing to stay on as NTUC chief.

Happily, just a day after the report was published, a man found Peggy wandering along Bartley Road, near the Ramakrishna Mission Home, and took the dog back to the teenager, the paper reported in a follow-up story.

One wonders if there was the same happy ending for five-year-old twins Juliet and Jennifer, who were so worried about their missing dog, Caesar, that they refused to go on holiday to Penang with their family.

Instead, on Aug 4, 1965, they came to the newspaper office with their mother to appeal for information on their dog, which, incidentally, was also a boxer.

No mention was ever made about whether Caesar was found.