FLYING TO EUROPE WITH A DOG
September 26, 2018
Hello!
So a few weeks ago, Jon Farmer, my husband of 6 years got into this cool architecture program studying wood for a year. In Finland! He sends me texts of what he's learning in class like the cellular structures of different types of wood, and I just send thumbs up emojis. Anyways, I'm a big believer in saying Yes! first and worrying about the consequences later. Well, our greatest consequence was trying to figure out what to do with our two dogs. We have two pups, Momo (8) and Nixon (6). Momo is easy peasy, sleeps all day and loves everyone and everything. But Nixon (definitely not named after the president) is a little more challenging. He's a good boy but he has more energy, has more opinions, and a big personality. We decided to place Momo with Jon's parents who usually watches her when we go out of town to shoot a wedding or something. That left us with bringing Nixon with us. We initially thought, no big deal. What naive little babies we once were.
Moving to Europe with a dog is wayyyyy more work than getting yourself over to Europe. As an American, our visa stuff wasn't too crazy, though we did have to go to San Fransisco from Denver to fill out our visa paperwork. That was a surprise, but otherwise, it wasn't too bad. Not so for your furry friend. You'll want to start freaking out before you think you have to.
Honestly, it all gets really confusing because you're hopping around to all these different websites, hoping you're understanding their convoluted US Government website language. And you can't talk to anybody. And when you do call, they tell you everything is on their website. But if I understood the website, I wouldn't be calling so could you at least pretend to be helpful? Nope. So I thought I'd boil down 5 things you need to know before moving to Europe with a dog. I'll try to link as much as possible but always go to the source. (Also, our experience is with Finland specifically and every single European country has a different set of rules so Yay.)
1. Things are time sensitive. You have to read the fine lines because the shit is in the details. So Finland wants you to have a rabies done after the microchip. If you haven't microchipped yet, you have to get him microchipped and then re-vaccinated with rabies because the rabies before the microchip isn't valid. But this new rabies vaccine has to be done at least 3 weeks before entering the country. [Also, all these vet visits, they get pricy. I think we spent about $1,000 in vet bills during this process.] And hey the EU health certificate signed by the USDA is only valid for 10 days. But tapeworm has to be administered within 5 days. Ya hear?
2. You need all the paperwork. Because not just any microchip will do. It has to be specific to their qualifications. And you need evidence of this microchip, like the date, doctor and number of the microchip. You'll probably have to email your vet for past paperwork, unless you have a Jon Farmer in your life or you yourself are like him and keep documents from ten years ago safe and sound. Let's hope your vet is still in business if you don't.
3. EU Health Certificate. So you need your vet to fill out the EU Health Certificate. But your vet has to be USDA-APHIS certified. How do you find such a vet? On the USDA website, it says you can call the regional director for your state and they'll give you a list in your area. In reality, they say they can't help you. So where does that leave you? VCA usually has someone who is certified, but BE CAREFUL. We made an appointment at the VCA across town with the certified vet and they were in surgery when we got there on time. But this other vet can do it and the certified vet can sign it, is that okay? Sure! And the USDA website says the vet will provide the paperwork so all we did was show up with our dog. Got him checked out, payed $250 and they said they'd send it off to the USDA who would stamp it and then send it to us. Except, we left and got a call from the USDA office two days later. "Hey, your vet sent us the wrong paperwork and you need to have another vet fill this out and resend it to us."
4. Fly out on a Friday or Saturday and not after a public holiday. Flying out later in the week will give you wiggle room for error. Because by the time we got the call, we were on the road, halfway to Oregon on Friday morning. Our flight was scheduled to fly out Tuesday, the day after Labor day. I wanted to fly out of Oregon so we could spend three days with my family before getting shipped away to the North Pole forever. So we're somewhere in Wyoming and I want heads to roll and Jon Farmer is trying to come up with a plan. Because of the holiday weekend, by the time a new vet overnighted the paperwork to the USDA office who would then overnight it back to us, it would have been Thursday, two days after our flight. All the stress.
5. Do it yourself. I wish I had printed the correct paperwork and brought it to the VCA. I wish I had made sure the USDA vet was the one overseeing his paperwork because that's who I scheduled it with. Somehow, miracle of miracles we found there was a USDA office in Salt Lake City and they were open until 4:30. The USDA office in Salt Lake City is full of the sweetest angel humans on the planet. We are forever indebted to Dr. Robert and his staff who were so helpful. At noon we were five hours outside Salt Lake City. During that time, Jon found a USDA-APHIS certified vet close to the USDA office and they agreed to squeeze us in at 4:00. We booked our asses to Salt Lake City. This time, we emailed the vet all the correct paperwork we found on the USDA website. We weren't taking any chances this time. We had them print it out and sign it, rushed over to Dr. Robert who was waiting for me in the hallway, and watched as they stamped it. We walked out of the USDA office at 4:45 with Nixon's paperwork in hand and I burst into relieved stress tears before devouring a double double at In-N-Out.
6. Rely on the official websites. So here's a bonus point, but make sure you're relying on the state's official websites. Make sure there's a .gov at the end of it like this:
Don't trust someone's blog like mine for the paperwork but here is the EU Health Certificate for Finland anyways:
And check the official website for the country you're going to as well like:
If you type in, moving to finland with a dog, you're going to land across a lot of random shit. And maybe it will be helpful. But at the end of the day, you need to do your own research and starting with the official websites is the safest if not the easiest way to go.
Good Luck!
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