At Ashwini Aiyar-Karunaratne’s Haven hotel, every guest is a four-legged canine.
Say hello to Fritzy. She’ll be staying here for the next 4 1/2 months. Housed in the ‘eco lodge’, right next door to the ‘beach house’ and a plot down from the ‘room with a view’, Fritzy is the only lodger at Haven last week. Soon, however, she’ll have plenty of company but for the moment when Fritzy is not gnawing on something, she likes to hang out with Eva, awaiting her owner’s call over Skype from Germany every weekend.
On the sprawling, one-acre property at Malabe, is a house that has been in Ashwini’s husband’s family for generations. We are greeted by raucous barks as we enter, as always there is a full house here – Ashwini has no less than five dogs of her own. They keep us company throughout the interview. Tinkerbell, the Midget Dalmatian, seems to be quite comfortable on the sofa and Elska, the Sausage Dog is at our feet. Batta, the Ridgeback, comes and goes as he pleases. He is currently feuding with Loki the Doberman, whose turn it is to stay in the kennel. Eva, of the undetermined breed, is occupied elsewhere.
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| Ashwini with her four-legged friends.
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“I opened this place mostly because I love dogs. Who better to look after dogs than me? I’ve had dogs all my life,” says Ashwini, explaining that she prides herself on her service. She offers her dogs as her credentials. It’s from them and the others she’s owned throughout her life that Ashwini says she learnt the skills she needs to run her pet hotel. She offers basic grooming and training services.
She’s never been bitten even though she’s had 15 different dogs to stay since Haven opened in November 2010. It’s not that she hasn’t had the occasional difficult animal (one Rottweiler had to have his medicine slipped directly down his throat), but she’s careful about which animals she takes on.
Puppies are favoured guests and get special treatment. They are never put in the kennels, instead they are allowed the run of the house. Her older guests get to come in too, even when they have unconventional tastes. Fritzy, Ashwini tells me, will eat anything – shoes, cushions and even sunglasses have been gnawed on and then discarded.
Before a guest is checked in, Ashwini makes sure she’s well acquainted with them. Owners are required to fill out a detailed three-page form. “I thought to myself, if I was leaving my dog somewhere, what would I have to tell those people? We need to know the dog before we take the dog because every dog is different,” she says.
Owners can then choose from the packages available. Starting from Rs. 800 and going up to Rs.1,500, Ashwini says their services and prices are tailored to every dog’s need. She takes certain variables into consideration when quoting her price. Having had firsthand experience of a Great Dane’s appetite (“they can eat a kg of rice and another kg of meat a day”), she says custom packages are required for some animals.
Many of her guests stay several weeks, while their owners are away. While Ashwini will orchestrate weekly Skype calls, she also takes pictures and puts them up on Facebook so that an owner can see the pet. (You can find them on www.facebook.com/havendoghotel and www.havendogslanka.com.) Owners are also asked to specify things like how often they’d like their dogs walked and bathed and if playtime should include socialising with other dogs. “We won’t have to ask you the questions the next time around, we’ll know how to deal with the dog,” she says, adding, “We give a trial run where you can leave your dog at no cost for one night.”
Getting the details right helps her manage the numbers. With three kennels, each just over 250 square feet in size, she rarely has more than eight dogs in total – but once three puppies brought the count to 11. That was the Avurudu week when she had to turn away 12 others. “There were dogs everywhere – it was so much fun though.” Ashwini has Haven’s Manager, H.M.D. Ruwan Kumara to assist her.
He loves animals so much that he has decided to become vegetarian. With his help she hopes that by next Avurudu they will have two more kennels at Haven. “We want to make two suites which are larger and closer to the house. We’re seriously considering a dog swimming pool,” she says, explaining that swimming is the best exercise for a dog. She even hopes to open a little boutique where owners can buy affordably priced treats and toys for their animals.
When it’s time for her guests to leave, Ashwini is just a little reluctant to let them go. “It’s terribly hard,” she confesses, “especially with the little ones. But I do stay in touch with them to see how they’re doing.” Fortunately, she has five that will never check out. Watching Tinkerbell lounge on the sofa she says, laughing, “We just live here, it’s their house.”
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