The five dogs of Turtle Beach and Sri Lanka's street dogs

Most street dogs in Sri Lanka are calm and used to people, and you can walk past them without any trouble if you leave them alone. Health bodies still ask every visitor to treat a bite or a scratch from any dog as urgent, because rabies is present on the island.

Why are there so many dogs on the street?

You will see them everywhere: asleep in the shade of a shop, trotting along the beach at dusk, waiting outside a temple kitchen. Estimates of their number differ a great deal, from about two million to more than three million. Sri Lankan newspapers have written that nobody has reliable figures.

Many of these dogs are not lost. Researchers describe them as free-roaming: they live outdoors, and a family, a shop or a whole lane feeds them. Others have nobody.

The country has worked for many years on vaccinating dogs. Charities and vets do a lot of the daily work, from feeding to sterilising to treating injuries.

How should you behave around street dogs?

The animal welfare charity FOUR PAWS publishes advice for travellers:

• Let them be. Do not go up to a dog you do not know, and never to one that is sleeping, eating or looking after puppies.
• Walk, never run. Running wakes the instinct to chase. If a dog barks at you from a distance, it is telling you to stay away. Keep calm and pass slowly.
• Do not stare, shout or wave your arms. Keep your arms close and turn a little to the side.
• Let the dog come to you, if you want to greet it at all, and let it sniff first.
• On a scooter or a bicycle, do not speed up. Slow down, or stop and wait until the dog loses interest.
• Keep away from groups of dogs, above all at night. If you find yourself among several, stay calm and move away slowly.

For children the rule is shorter: we never touch a dog we do not know, and we ask first about the ones we do.

Official travel pages add one thing. The health agency of the United States, the CDC, asks travellers not to touch or feed animals they do not know, and not to let an animal lick a cut or a scratch.

What do health bodies say about rabies?

Rabies is a disease of the nervous system, passed on in the saliva of an infected animal, usually by a bite or a scratch. The World Health Organization says dogs are the source of up to 99% of human cases worldwide. Once symptoms appear, it is almost always fatal. Treatment given quickly after a bite prevents it.

In Sri Lanka the numbers are small and have fallen a long way. The health ministry's Epidemiology Unit recorded 20 confirmed human deaths in 2024, and has written of an average of about 25 a year over recent years. In the 1970s it was more than 300 a year. But the CDC still writes that dogs with rabies are commonly found in Sri Lanka.

If a dog bites or scratches you and the skin is broken, or licks a wound:

• Wash it at once with soap and running water, for at least 15 minutes. This is the WHO's first instruction.
• See a doctor the same day. Do not wait to see whether the dog looks ill, and do not wait until you are home. The doctor decides on the vaccine course and any other treatment. Government hospitals in Sri Lanka give this treatment. From Ohana, the nearest hospital is about five minutes away.
• Finish the course you are given, and tell your own doctor when you get home.

Before you travel, ask a travel clinic whether the rabies vaccine makes sense for your trip. It is their decision with you, not ours. This page is general information, not medical advice. The sources are the WHO fact sheet on rabies and the CDC page for travellers to Sri Lanka. Check them before you travel.

Who are the five dogs of Turtle Beach?

Five beach dogs live at Ohana. We did not go looking for them. They chose us. Now they are Ohana.

• Nero. Black, and the big one.
• Baby. Black and tan.
• Avena. Fawn, with a green collar.
• Malakai. The smallest, a blue merle.
• Cappuccino. The puppy, tan with white paws.

A jar at the till pays for their food, their vaccines, their care and their treatment against parasites. You will meet them in the garden and on the sand. There is more about each of them on our page about the dogs of Ohana.

One house rule: feed them love, not your plate. Food from the table teaches a dog to beg at every table, and not every guest enjoys that. They are very gentle and relaxed in general. But they live free here, and we have no place to keep them apart, so if you or your child are truly afraid of dogs, you should know this before you come.

The advice above still holds here. They are well looked after, but any scratch that breaks the skin, from any animal, deserves soap, water and a doctor's opinion.

How can a visitor help street dogs?

• Come to the charity class. "Vinyasa for the Street Dogs" is our charity class in the shala. 100% of contributions go to two street-dog charities of the south, WECare Worldwide and The Dziko Project. Its days are on our events page. A donation to them directly reaches more dogs than a bag of biscuits.
• Put something in a jar. The one at the till is for our five. The other, with the QR flyer, goes to the same two charities.

Dogs are one part of life in this bay. The turtles are another, and you can read about Turtle Beach and its turtles on our turtles page, or about Turtle Beach in Dikwella in this guide.

Good to know

• Ohana is at Turtle Beach, Dikwella, less than five minutes by road from Hiriketiya.
• Five beach dogs live here: Nero, Baby, Avena, Malakai and Cappuccino. A jar at the till pays for their food, vaccines, care and anti-parasite treatment.
• "Vinyasa for the Street Dogs" is our charity class: 100% of contributions go to WECare Worldwide and The Dziko Project.
• Join any activity and you get 10% off the whole restaurant menu.
• We are open every day from 08:00 to 21:00.