In September 2025, we moved to the Georgian countryside. That is where we met Jeka.
He was a hunting dog — black and white, spotted, with long ears and a way of looking at you that made you feel chosen. He would come find us whenever he could. We started to bond the way you do with a dog who has decided you are his person, even before you have decided it yourself.
We took him in. We started the deworming process. We had vaccines scheduled. We had plans.
Jeka, Georgia, 2025
Then one day, without warning, he began having seizures. Within days, his health collapsed completely. The diagnosis was canine distemper — a disease so preventable that a single vaccine, costing almost nothing, stops it entirely. Without that vaccine, it is almost always fatal.
Jeka died on December 22, 2025. He died painfully, but with dignity — treated by vets, on his own bed, surrounded by his new toys and his new family. He had been with us for less than three months.
What would have been different
If Jeka had been a registered dog — a QR collar, a health record, a named caretaker — someone would have scanned his tag and seen he had no vaccinations logged. The caretaker would have been notified. The distemper vaccine costs 5 GEL. He would have received it before he ever got sick.
He would be alive.
In Georgia, there are thousands of Jekas. Dogs that people see every day without really seeing. Dogs who get sick from things that cost 5 GEL to prevent, and die because nobody knew, or nobody coordinated, or nobody had a system.
Jeka is the system now. Not a charity. Not a campaign. A permanent care infrastructure for every street dog in every zone that joins — so that the next dog who almost has the chance actually gets it.
You know one of these dogs. Maybe you have known several.
Maybe you tried to help and did not know how. Maybe you still think about one of them.
This platform is for you. And for them.