PETITION TARGETS: David Songulashvili, Minister of Environmental Protection and Agriculture; Giorgi Iakobashvili, Head of the National Food Agency; Nikoloz Aragveli, Director of Tbilisi’s Animal Monitoring Agency; and Beka Giunashvili, Head of the Shida Kartli Intermunicipal Agency for Stray Pets
For years, Olya Kopteva provided care for dozens of dogs at a cemetery in Tbilisi, Georgia, according to regional news. In early March, several disappeared.
Kopteva eventually found the dogs at a shelter, and staff returned the animals. However, two of those dogs and six others vanished again the following day.
Shelter staff told Kopteva the dogs had been released, but she said they provided no records supporting that claim.
Mariam Charkviani faced a similar ordeal in Tbilisi when three dogs under her care went missing at the end of February.
The city’s Animal Monitoring Agency told her that one had been vaccinated and returned to where the dog was caught — but after contacting the police and making repeated inquiries, Charkviani learned that the dog was still at the shelter with an injury.
Concerns about the management of stray dogs extend beyond Tbilisi. In late March, Zero Strays Georgia reported that authorities removed roughly 65 stray dogs from Zugdidi for veterinary procedures, but activists said some were already vaccinated and sterilized.
Following public outcry, officials said 28 were released, but activists alleged they were left in an uninhabited area near a highway where they would be unable to find food, placing them at risk of prolonged suffering and death.
Volunteers also witnessed fights among dogs kept in cramped transport cages and noted many lacked new tags, raising further questions about how they were being tracked.
The most alarming allegations emerged in Gori, where an activist shared footage of smoke coming from a shelter incinerator and alleged that dogs brought there at night may have been burned — a claim officials denied.
No dog should be taken from their community, subjected to stressful confinement, and left stranded in an unfamiliar or dangerous place — or meet an even worse fate — while the people who care for them search desperately for answers.
Sign our petition urging authorities to return removed dogs to their original locations and to maintain publicly accessible records of every animal’s treatment and whereabouts.
