Dog Days in Georgia

In Tbilisi, Old Silk Road sulfur bathhouses, roadside inns, and ancient wine cellars mingle with Soviet-era brutalism, broken Lego apartments, grand 19th-century Rococo and Moorish Revival-style performance venues and techno clubs. The most famous techno club, Bassiani, was once a Soviet stadium swimming pool. The proud and persevering Georgian identity has survived centuries of invading empires. The country's present-day desire to be recognized as a proactive part of a forward-looking Europe is the dominant feature of self-expression in art and conversation.

During my first few days in Tbilisi, the customary sightseeing pastime of people watching was swiftly replaced by a fervent dog watch. Having lived on four continents, witnessing stray animals was nothing new, but in Georgia, I was spellbound by the sheer volume of street dogs and the ways in which they interacted with the landscape and people in the transcontinental space between the East and the West.

For the most part, the dogs were friendly and wolf-like with thick, dusty coats, a mix of hard graft breeds modified over centuries to guard or pull. On sunny days in the capital, sleeping dogs lay along the Kura river bridges and the Soviet military vintage stalls at the Dry Bridge Flea Market, on the fortress of Narikala, or in the narrow twists of Old Town. Others lounged under the graffitied underpasses, the doorways of medieval cathedrals, and the courtyards outside Fabrika—an old Soviet sewing factory-turned hip hostel—and the former address of Stalin's mass-murdering secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria.

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