Cats and dogs need passports to cross borders. Just like you and me and everybody else, there is no discrimination in this matter for travellers who walk on four legs. And just like with any other travellers’ visas, the requirements, documents and procedures needed to get pet passports vary from country to country and give you a long a headache. Still, animals deserve to travel with their human friends, and there are ways to bring them legally across borders, by car, train bus or plane. Here we explain the documents that a cat or dog needs to travel, focusing on pets coming into the European Union (EU), but with hints to help you find your way to anywhere in the world. What is a pet passport.
A pet passport is a collection of documents, vaccination records and stamps. Some of the veterinary records might be included in a passport-looking little book, and others will be prints, and signed copies of certificates and permits, needed for your pet friend to cross each border.
Different documents for different countries
Each and every country has specific regulations for travelling animals. Even if you are only going to visit for a few days you will probably need to gather some documents. We usually check in this website for pet travel requirements around the world. It is complete and up to date and has greatly helped us getting an idea of what pet passports are about.
EU pet passport within member states
If your pet lives in the EU and only plan to travel within the borders of the union, congratulations! EU Member states have unified regulations about pet travels. Your cat or dog can easily get an EU blue passport from the local vet to travel within member states. It is pretty straightforward. You can find all the info here.
EU pet passport from a third country
To bring a pet into the EU from anywhere in the world things get a bit more difficult. The rules are very strict and specific.
The requirements are listed by the EU and can also be found summarized in the page of WHO. But to be honest, when we started to gather all the documents needed to bring our cat from India to Europe we were really confused about what they meant and how things should even look like. In India, not even most veterinarians knew what we were asking for.So we just want to shed some light on the items that most countries require, to make your search easier.
The following guide illustrates the process we followed to bring a cat from India to the EU. Since we did most of the way overland, we will also share some tips for those who are not going straight by plane.
1. Implanting a microchip
For many countries, including all EU members, your pet will need an ISO 11784/11785 compliant 15 digit pet microchip It is a little capsule implanted by a veterinarian in the back or neck of the animal. It’s your pet’s ID number, so to say, and it can be checked with a bar-code reader by customs and quarantine officers at border crossings.
When travelling to the EU (or any other country where a microchip is needed) it is very required to implant the chip before vaccinating the pet against rabies. Along with the microchip, make sure you receive a microchip certificate, where the details of the pet, of the “owner”, and of the microchip are specified. The date of implant is very important. Also, ask for the bar-coded stickers that should come with it.
2. Rabies vaccine
A rabbies vacine is the most common pet passport requirement. Actually, it is needed and advisable for all cats and dogs, even more those living in countries which are not rabies-free.
For your pet passport, you will need the vaccine to be included in the “vaccination record”, which is typically one page of a little booklet. The vet should paste onto this page a vaccine sticker (which specifies the brand and batch number) and add the date of injection, the validity and his signature and stamp.
In countries that require a microchip, you should vaccinate your pet after the chip has been implanted. Nothing gets registered in the microchip, but authorities will check the dates written on paper. If you did the vaccine earlier, just do it again.
Most countries, and of course the EU, specify that a rabies vaccine must have been given at least 21 days prior to the travel and up to one year. It is wise to keep the vaccination record of your travelling pet up to date.
Regarding the order of microchipping and vaccination, if you do it on the same day you can ask the vet to indicate the times of implant and vaccination in the certificates as an ultimate proof that it was done after the chip (we had it done the same day without any indication of the order, and have not had any problems, but we crossed overland to Bulgaria, and not by Germany or the UK by plane, so be careful with countries that are picky with regulations).
For EU countries, the pet must be 12 weeks old before vaccination. We have read some countries may accept kittens or puppies below 3 months of age, but have no experience with this matter.
3. Rabies titer test
All EU countries, and many others around the world, require that pet passports include a document proving they have a number of rabies antibodies that declare them free from the disease.
This document is obtained by administering an rabies antibody titration test (extracting blood) that must be processed at an approved laboratory. The test should be done at least 30 days after the rabies vaccine was given. And one can usually cross the border of countries that require titer test, only 90 days after the date the blood was drawn (although in our case the date given in the certificate is the day the blood was received by the laboratory in Europe, not when it was drawn by the Indian vet).
There are few approved laboratories, and most of the in European countries (see this list of approved laboratories), so if you are bringing your pet from anywhere else, you will need to send the blood by courier in a refrigerated way. The best thing is to do is finding in the country where you are a veterinary that has experience with pet export, they usually have contacts with couriers and one of the laboratories, so they take care of extracting and sending the blood, and the process is greatly simplified (and it may even cost you less).
This procedure is a little nightmare in the pet-passport process, but in fact is quite a humane way to avoid pets staying in quarantine for months upon arrival (in a way is like pre-quarantining them in advance), as well as preventing rabies from spreading in countries which are free of it. So, in the end, it’s for everyone’s own good.
The EU accepts pet from a few countries exempt of this test (check in in Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 577/2013 if you are in the lucky list).
We do not know what happens if one tries to enter an EU country without titer test. Is your pet deported back to when it came from? Does the pet stay in quarantine? If so, for how long?. If you have experience and can shed some light, please leave a comment.
We also have not managed to find out if countries, like Russia, that require pets to come from rabies-free countries would accept a titer test and 3 months waiting as proof of being a rabies-free pet.
4. Other vaccines / deworm / tests
In addition to the rabbies vaccine, cats and dogs are required to be free from other diseases. It is common to administer a “combo vaccine” for the most typical illnesses, before, after or on the same day the rabbies shot is given. De-worming treatment can also be given then. Ssometimes the vet will give you a pill or drops and indicate the dosage, which you administer at home, but ask him to include the deworming record in the pet passport.
Dogs travelling to Finland, Ireland, Malta or the United Kingdom, or Norway, must be treated against the parasite Echinococcus multilocularis. If you are not sure of where you are landing into the EU, it might be wise to treat the dog anyway. This does not seem to be compulsory for cats.
Even if you are not thinking of travelling yet, it is useful to make sure that any vaccines and de-worming given to your pet are reflected in the vaccination and health record (sticker / brand name, dates, signature), they will be useful for the pet passport if you decide to travel later on.
If you travel overland, beware that not only the EU has strict requirements. For example, to travel to Russia and other countries of the Eurasian Economic Union a test is needed to prove that the pet is free from Dermatophitosis (ring worm). Like the rabies titer test, samples should be processed in approved laboratories and it seems to take some time.
5. Veterinary certificates
All pet travel sites explain that each country requires a specific veterinary certificate, but before we started all the pet passport process we were really confused (and so were the veterinaries we visited). How should these documents look? Which information do they need to contain? In which language?
EU Animal Health Certificate
The EU animal health certificate for pets is a 10 pages document containing the pet details and all vaccines and medical certifications needed to enter the EU, as well as signatures by veterinarian authorities. It also contains a disclaimer from you (the “owner”) that you are not going to sell the pet. It must be printed and signed in a bilingual duplicate – one copy English and one in the official language of the country that will be your point of entry into the EU.
The foremost important thing is that it must carry the stamp of an official veterinary OR be filled in and stamped by an authorized veterinarian AND then get endorsed by the competent authority of the country your pet os coming from. We never understood the difference between official and authorized, and none of the vets we visited could help us out, so we got it stamped and then endorsed. If in doubt, extra stamps do not harm.
The document has to be filled in very specific ways (for some reason in has a lot of blank spaces!), but if you go through it slowly with your vet, you will get it right. It must show the number of your pet’s microchip and all the details of vaccination against rabies, the details of the blood sampling, and if requested, the details of the treatment against Echinococcus multilocularis (for dogs). You may want to ask your vet to add a stamp and signature next to each vaccination details (advice from a relocation expert).
The document is valid for 10 days from the date of issue by the official veterinarian. If the journey us by sea, the ten days are extended by the duration of travel by sea. There is no mention of additional time when travelling by land (and nobody could help us clarify that, we suppose it is hard to prove the duration of a hitchhiking travel, anyway).
Extra: vet certificates for any other countries
Apart from EU members, which have very specific requirements, we can so far divide all other countries into two groups: Easy OR Hard, when it comes to getting veterinary certificates for your pet.
Easy pet countries are those into which your pet can come with a rabies vaccine and any sort of simple health certificate, signed by any neighbourhood veterinarian (official, of course), without many complications. This document is usually a paper that states the details of the pet and owner, registers the inoculation record and certifies the pet’s good health. We got one in India that read “Travel and vaccine certificate”, and we simply carried it together with her Indian vaccines records, microchip certificate and Indian Export document (See below). It had the very same information but put all together in one page – border authorities like things to be listed together, so they only need to make one photocopy. But remember to carry all the papers you have, the more documents and signatures you collect the more professional you will look when crossing into countries where regulations are loose. This simple vet certificate should usually be “endorsed” (see below)
Difficult pet countries: we have heard of destinations where, just like with the EU, the animal health certificate must be specifically formatted – sometimes bilingual or containing details of extra tests or treatments (like Russia), sometimes expedited within a short period (like for China). Check the regulations carefully beforehand, make some research, ask other travellers, and let us know if you have some details that might be of interest for anybody else.
Аз съм Роси. Това е моят блог за грим, мода, козметика.
