This curious ditty appears to have first appeared in a production of the show “The Cooptimists” in 1921.  With music and lyrics credited to “Melville Gideon, Clifford Grey, Irving Berlin, Philip Braham, Vivian Ellis, William Helmore, Ivy St Helier, Laddie Cliff, Austin Melford, Greatrex Newman, Arthur Schwartz, Clifford Seyler, et al.”  full lyrics are:

If a little dog is sad
He’ll whine and wail
When a little dog is glad
He’ll wag his tail
All the Pekingese and Poms
Wave their little to’s and from’s
But one animal I know
Has no tail to wag, and so,

How can a guinea pig show he’s pleased
When he hasn’t got a tail to wag?
All other animals, you will find,
Have got a little tail stuck on behind.
If you’d only put a tail on a guinea pig,
And finish off a decent job,
Then the price of a guinea pig would go right up
From a guinea to thirty bob.

Notes by Gwilym Davies 19 April 2015