The first thing you notice when you step off from the Marjanishvili metro station are the stray, tagged dogs. Large, unbothered dogs with double coats and dirty paws stand or sit in the middle of the cobblestone sidewalks. They stare off in one direction, as if they are contemplating which way to go, and the humans who walk past them are completely benevolent to their presence. The stray dogs are just as common of a sight as gum on the pavement. Their behavior is not the same as the stray dogs in Kazakhstan, who often sheepishly jog past humans, with a nervous look to their face. These Tbilisi dogs are calm and gathered. They sleep wherever it pleases them, whether it be a patch of grass on a busy roundabout or a sunny sidewalk near a storefront. These Tbilisi dogs do not bark at humans or other dogs, but they do not like those cargo bikes that deliver food.
For every stray dog on the street, there is one dog, usually smaller, with an owner who dresses it with a fashionable coat (and sometimes pants). These pets, who walk through the same parks as the strays, get pulled and tugged if they sniff a particular spot for too long. Sometimes the stray dogs come close to these pet dogs, and they sniff each other and tails wag, until the owner decides that it is time to go and drag their dog apart. The dogs go their separate ways: the strays will sniff out for discarded food while the pet dogs wait for their owners to undress them, wipe down their feet, and prepare their dinner.
I wonder what the strays think when they see a dog with a collar and leash walking by with their humans. Can dogs understand the difference between their freedom and wildness? Why do some dogs roam and survive while the others are fed and walked? Do they feel bad for each other? Who feels sorry for who? But dogs do not think like this. But who is to say that dogs don’t understand the difference between their ultra-domesticated counterparts?
I could not help but to think who has it better? Some might say that dogs as pets are absolutely better off. I can’t really disagree. When dog is cared for, when it is fed meat, not bones, and walked, not just around the block, but walked with all its physical needs met, and when it sleeps and dreams about its day, it thinks about how warm its bed is or the squirrel it almost caught. What do stray dogs dream about? Do they dream of hunger and the cold? Do they remember the people who kicked them in the past? Or the ones who fed them? The ones who helped them cross the busy streets? Maybe they dream about other dogs, playing together, by the Black Sea. Or they remember the tourist group they followed around, barking at the other dogs, protecting its new “pack.”
warm socks cold feet 