Ever take a dog to Europe from the US?

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/pet-travel/by-country/eu/pettravel-portugal

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We've travelled with our dogs to a few countries and always have required passports. AFAIK in europe a dog passport is more or less standard now anyways.

 

Long story put venting my absolute disgust with the EU.

I've moved my pets starting end of last year from Papua New Guinea to Europe.

So far it's been like a 6 month migraine that still isn't finished.

Some of my pets had an EU passport and thus all required vaccinations. Still, the EU demanded several health checks to be done. This came to around 2 grand per pet.

EU regulations also state that pets have to travel 5 days before or 5 days after owner traveling. This was done for the first batch of 3 smaller pets, because apparently cargo plans can't carry crates larger than X? Or fly in from Singapore to only a few airports.

First lot of (2 cats and small dog) fly. Mid air on way to singapore, EU geniuses have decided that the documents that where accepted, actually are not, because they recently changed documents. I scramble to my vet and we do all the documents over again. We're up till about 1am doing this. After completing first document she realizes that literally everything is the same. What changed? Layout of document so that necessitated new documents and all previous ones are invalidated. Get them endorsed by government in an impossible time frame next morning (my vet, legend that she is, managed to get it done in 1 morning rather than the normal 3-5 days).

The other 4 (one EU, 3 PNG) would fly a couple of weeks later with another family member. The day before flying however, EU casually tells us that even though the Titre test was clean and clear, they still had to wait an additional 3 months for what can only be described as ''reasons''. So, scramble and only through good connections did we manage to find a place for the 3 PNG animals in a dog security company ran by expats (FWIW, few ''houses'' there for expats, just about everyone lives in an apartment, so housing them with friends was frankly impossible). So last of the EU dogs was transported to Europe but arrived in Amsterdam, and finally arrived here after a 3 week stay in another pet hotel.

Fast forward to 2 days ago. Pets about to take off. Midair (yes I was getting flashbacks to a few months ago), the originally accepted documents are now decided to actually be wrong, they all have the same HC number, which is only allowed if they're all on the same document? But there where 3 separate documents so obviously the bureaucrats are immensely puzzled by this, and reject the documents and request new ones to be made. Obviously they tell this after business closes so another 15 precious hours are wasted.

But the fun isn't over yet. KLM not only rejected the papers, but now also the crate for my great dane. You see, the cargo plane flying to PNG had a maximum door height we had to take into account. So since a big dog spends most his time lying down anyways, we went very generous with the length of the cage so he has plenty of room still (the technical term for the cage is ****ing massive). But, KLM, in their infinite wisdom, says the crate isn't high enough. So we'll make a new one, right? WRONG. Singapore only allows pets in transit to be there for 24 hours. What KLM is saying is that it's cruel to send an animal in a slightly height restricted crate (it's still just above his shoulders), so the wise thing to do, instead of letting him fly the next 13 hours to freedom, they want to send him back to PNG, get a new crate made in Singapore, so that he can then fly back to Singapore in the same "too small" cage, and complete the rest of his journey in presumably superior comfort. So spend more hours in a small cage...because reasons. The ****ing logic is beyond me.

Oh, but the fun isn't over. I just got an email saying that the new re-endorsed documents done this morning, have been done wrong. AND the original copies need to be send out for them to be accepted in the Netherlandsand until the originals are there, that's another 120 euro per day per animal.

And I forgot, the EU originally improved all the movement with all facts known, just didn't tell us about the 3 month wait period for the non-eu animals a day before their flight. So to then fly them here, they need an owner with them....(so they expect me to fly to PNG, pick up my dogs, and fly back...when we can't even enter many countries due to Corona. Sound logic!), or if that doesn't work, simply get a commercial license. Which you can get easily by setting up a business and be recognized. For your privately owned pets, which are all spayed/castrated. So that takes months. To get around all this, the Dutch importers say they can only come in using commercial license, Importers in Spain said that none of that is necessary, they only need a 60 euro surcharge. Netherlands doesn't want to hear it. Weeks of arguing back and forth, I finally managed to get in contact with the Dutch and Spanish state vets to come to an understanding and got an exemption granted.


We've flown pets all over the world. Getting them into Europe has genuinely been a horrifying (I don't want to use that term lightly) experience. I'm absolutely disgusted by the insane bureaucracy. Last time my pets flew was from Europe to Australia, and that was right as the entirety of Australia decided to set itself on fire. that was a more pleasant experience. The company that helped us then, Jetpets, was wonderful. They even drove them 1200km+ and staying at friends houses so they could quarantine in saver places and make their flights right as the corona shutdowns really started. In Europe, the first batch of pets arriving here has been shameful. For some reason a vet checks them up (another 260 euros, each). The ****ing idiot didn't even notice one of the cats was severely dehydrated and has big cuts on her legs somehow...thankfully the road pet transport guys did and gave her lots of water and addressed her wounds.

This whole experience was a disgusting joke. I can't wait for it to be over. Just the trip back I could've bought a brand new BMW. ****, if they didn't go at all I would've had a (cheap) 550.