For the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, Sochi officials decided that it would be best to clear the streets of the stray dogs that surround the area.

“It’s an attempt to beautify the problem and in effect it gives a rather graphic and horrific (picture of the city),” said Andrew Rowan, who is also The Humane Society of the United States’ chief scientific officer.

Sochi’s plan to kill 2,000 dogs was announced last summer, prompting an international outcry. City officials backed off their plans but then hired a pest control company to kill the dogs starting last fall. Animal welfare advocates say hundreds have been killed reported from Carla Hall of the Los Angeles Times.

With the extermination of the dogs happening, many of the Olympic athletes are touched by the situation and are planning on taking some back home with them. Gus Kenworthy, a freestyle skier from Colorado, was scheduled to return home Monday but waits in Sochi for the puppies and their mom so that they all can return to Colorado.  Many animal lovers like Gus Kenworthy in the United States are horrified at the extermination.

“The questions also loom: What will become of the dogs after the Olympics are over? Who will adopt them? Will some of these dogs spend the rest of their lives in severely crowded dirt pens? Are there any plans to build a permanent animal shelter in Sochi and implement a spay-and-neuter program?,” said a PETA representative.

PETA is talking with the Russian mayor and officials to enact a spay and neuter initiative opposed to the harmful killings and packed humane societies.