Dog owners and EU travel

[Boycey]

My advise would be that whatever your vet says, check it with the goverments site dealing with pet travel. Vets have been giving out incorrect information as they have not fully understood the process. One vet told us we would need to get another rabies injection done then blood test despite our dog having a booster 12 months ago, none of this was required if we were leaving before the final decision whether on 29 th of march or in April vet tried to suggest we needed it done.. We decided to get the blood test done more in preparation for another trip in September. We then got another phone call from different vet telling us blood test fine but if setting off in march as we were doing our dog would not be allowed back into uk for 3 months. I explained she was wrong she was adamant she was right gave me a phone number of department I already had been in touch with. Both vets were wrong and eventually sent emails apologising
that the practise had been giving out wrong info. All that is needed for returning your dog is the uk passport to say wormed and fit.

 

[Allanm]

No!.... Your dog requires a rabies titre test (blood test) to ENTER the EU.

Third-country official veterinary certificate
To enter or return to the EU from listed or unlisted countries you need either:

• a third-country official veterinary certificate and any other documents listed on it
• a pet passport if your pet was given it before leaving the EU

https://www.gov.uk/take-pet-abroad/pet-passport

Pete

Your link is for pets entering the U.K. not EU.

We spoke to our vets in France a couple of days ago, another today and our old vet in the U.K today.
None of them knew or had been given guidance from Defra about what the new procedures would be.

 

[Tykatem]

Your link is for pets entering the U.K. not EU.

The link I gave in that post states how To enter or return to the EU with your pet from listed or unlisted countries (which the UK would be after Brexit) you'd need either

a third-country official veterinary certificate and any other documents listed on it
a pet passport if your pet was given it before leaving the EU

Pete

 

[gus-lopez]

The link I gave in that post states how To enter or return to the EU with your pet from listed or unlisted countries (which the UK would be after Brexit) you'd need either

a third-country official veterinary certificate and any other documents listed on it
a pet passport if your pet was given it before leaving the EU

Pete

For a dog RETURNING to the EU ,like mine would be, there is no requirement for the 10 day 'fit to travel certificate' according to the email I have from DEFra. Nor will he be getting one. All he will have is spanish pet passport & blood test certificate.

 

[Tykatem]

For a dog RETURNING to the EU ,like mine would be, there is no requirement for the 10 day 'fit to travel certificate' according to the email I have from DEFra. Nor will he be getting one. All he will have is spanish pet passport & blood test certificate.

Quite right, as you see from the link provided, you'll only require either a health certificate or your Spanish pet passport and no need for blood test certificate.

https://www.gov.uk/take-pet-abroad/pet-passport

Pete

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[PeterdeMaserof]

Yes, but it means starting from scratch again, and if it takes the same length of time we won’t be able to stay in France for the four months required as we will be limited to 90 days. Also it will mean a rabies inoculation every year.

 

[Neodave]

Does all this mean British Camp Sites being inundated with dog owning motorhomers.

 

[Wendo55]

If we did actually leave the EU and these new rules were applied the same day, I wonder how many returning dogs, who haven't had the new blood test, health certificate etc before they left the country, can they accommodate in the quarantine kennels?

 

[Larby]

If we did actually leave the EU and these new rules were applied the same day, I wonder how many returning dogs, who haven't had the new blood test, health certificate etc before they left the country, can they accommodate in the quarantine kennels?

Won't affect returning UK dogs, no rule change to come back.

 

[Tykatem]

If we did actually leave the EU and these new rules were applied the same day, I wonder how many returning dogs, who haven't had the new blood test, health certificate etc before they left the country, can they accommodate in the quarantine kennels?

There will be no change to the current health preparations for pets entering GB from the EU after Exit.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pet-travel-to-europe-after-brexit

Pete

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[glenn2926]

There will be no change to the current health preparations for pets entering GB from the EU after Exit.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pet-travel-to-europe-after-brexit

Pete

Sounds good to me as mine has never been checked on the way out. They do not even look at the dog’s passport. So it would seem like carry on as before. Which is what I was going to do anyway even before the scaremongering.
I did wonder about all the talk about pet passports. As far as I was aware they were only ever needed to bring the dog back into the U.K. in the first place. Son lives in France and regularly takes his dog through the tunnel into Italy. The dog doesn’t have a passport.

 

[Lafant]

We booked the tunnel, and camp sites for mid June. One of our two new pups had a pet passport. The other could be done in good time. But.... we had to have a blood test for the dog with the pet passport, and guess what? It was negative. So he’s been re vaccinated and in a few weeks will be re tested. IF that comes back positive, we will still have to wait three months before we can travel.

So, an extension or we’ll have to cancel.

 

[Frog]

Very informative post, thanks guys. We have a French property and both our dogs are from France and have had French passports from the very beginning, I was wondering how they stood in this fiasco.

 

[Casper46]

Very informative post, thanks guys. We have a French property and both our dogs are from France and have had French passports from the very beginning, I was wondering how they stood in this fiasco.

As your dogs have a French passport, do they have to have their rabies boosters yearly rather than every three years?

 

[Bobbus]

This is the latest that I have been able to find out from the GOV website. We live in Italy and are thinking of a May (no pun intended) trip to the UK and a June return.

UK nationals living in the EU
If you’re living in the EU and plan to travel with your pet using a UK-issued pet passport, you should speak to your local vet. They’ll be able to help you understand the impact of EU Exit and ensure you’re compliant with EU Pet Travel Regulations.

If you have a pet passport issued by an EU member state, you can use it to bring your pet to the UK.

You can also use it to return to the EU, as long as your pet has had a successful rabies antibody blood test. You must make sure the blood test is taken at least 30 days after the date of rabies vaccination.

If the blood sample is taken in the UK you must wait 3 months from the date the successful blood sample was taken before you travel back to the EU. You don’t have to wait the 3 months before travelling if your pet has a successful blood test before leaving the EU.

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[Bobbus]

Should have added that this is after Brexit, deal or no deal. Just thinking of the June 1st scenario..

 

[suavecarve]

Not a dog owner, however realitvely keen Brexit follower.

My understanding is that these rabies things you have to do differently this year were in case we are out of the EU so if we stay in the EU you dont need them ? If that is correct read on.

At the time of writing (has to be put in here) we have just extended to October 31st but we can get out earlier. There are only 3 options available during this time scale. Revoking article 50 (meaning we stay in the EU) TMs deal which would mean we stay in for another 18 months to 2 years or No Deal. This parliament will not let a No Deal go through (so unless the Court case gets heard and wins then No Deal is almost an impossibility before 31/10). The only feasible way of being out before 31/10 is a General Election and a party wins that wants to revoke Article 50. There is a slim possibility that the Tories win with somebody like Steve Baker (66/1) being the new leader and him saying we are out immediately or Nigel Farage winning and doing the same (1000/1 i would suspect). None of hte main contenders will revoke it immediately including Jacob, because there is now a timescale and this action is nonsensical.

So if i were a dog owner and wanted to go abroad and return before 31/10 I wouldnt worry as the rules are the same as last year. I am not bothering with IDP green card or the 90 day rule when we pop off in a couple of weeks.

I wait to be corrected.

 

[juwlz]

OV training (Official Veterinarian - a qualification to issue Pet Travel documents) isn't done by every vet, and Brexit is complicating things even more than before. I do not envy the OVs the responsibility of navigating the legislational minefield of pet travel regulations and paperwork. Many of the former OVs at the practice I work at have not renewed their qualifications (which was required for all of them last year), partly because of the additional complications which a no-deal Brexit would add.

I'm not at all surprised that somebody has reported that their vet doesn't want to commit to assuming that a titre test 8 years ago, done 21 days after the original vaccination would still be considered valid. They're not trying to make money; they're trying to protect you and your pet from a jobsworth's interpretation of the legislation and a possible period of quarantine. I don't know about other practices, but we certainly don't have any profit margin on blood tests - those prices from the external lab are passed on to the client at cost (although we do add a separate, transparent, charge for the vet's time to actually take the blood sample, send them off and interpret / report the results).

When pet travel was first introduced, the biggest perceived risk was the real one of potentially bringing Rabies into the UK from countries that were not Rabies-free, which included Europe. At the time, you had to get your Rabies vaccination (which in the UK was valid for 3 years, and not a day more, but varies according to the country you're travelling to), and then wait for it to "take", and then have a blood test to prove that the titre was high enough to prove (as far as any titre test ever can) that the animal (usually a dog) was protected against Rabies. As long as you re-vaccinated strictly within 3 years, you didn't need to repeat the blood test. I forget the timescales at the time, but once the titre was high enough, you could travel to the countries that accepted the same levels of rabies protection after a waiting period, and return to the UK.

Then the legislation was relaxed, and all you needed to do was to have the Rabies vaccination, and you could travel pretty much straight away IIRC (subject to all the usual stuff you have to do immediately before the trip itself, of course) and could return to the UK 21 days or more after the vaccination. Because the blood test was no longer required, it didn't matter as much if you didn't quite get your next vaccination done within the three year limit.

Note that there are two components to the length of time that the vaccination is considered to be valid. One is the manufacturer's licence period, based on their testing (which is three years); the other is the individual destination's legislation - presumably modified by the perceived risk of rabies in their own country. Spain is the only EU country I know of where they require an annual rabies vaccination.

According to one of the OVs in the practice where I work, in the event of a No Deal Brexit, the situation is reversed from the previous highest perceived risk (i.e. of bringing Rabies into the UK); because of politics, dogs from the UK will be treated by Europe the same as dogs from Third World countries, i.e. they will be subject to the most stringent import regulations when leaving the UK - despite the fact that the UK is actually rabies-free.

In the absolute worst case, Pet Passports won't be valid at all, and every separate trip outside the UK will require a single-use country-specific travel document (which costs about 80-90% of the price of a multiple trip Pet Passport - cheaper for one trip, but more expensive even for two, of course). Every destination country has its own import paperwork, and frankly, our OVs are dreading that possibility.

In the second-worst case, Pet Passports will still be valid, but we will essentially revert to the more stringent requirements relating to the rabies vaccination itself that used to apply.

This means that you (or rather your pet) must have had the rabies vaccination a minimum of 4 months before you travel. After that, you must wait 30 days (one month) before you can have the blood test, and if the result shows a high enough titre it will be another 3 months before you can actually import a dog from the UK to another country without undergoing quarantine.

If the blood tests don't show a high enough titre - even marginally - you have to have another rabies vaccination, wait another 30 days, and then have another blood test.

Some dogs do fail the blood test. We had it happen to some before the relaxation of the regulations. For that reason we always used to recommend starting the pet passport process at least 6 months before the planned date of travel before the regulations were relaxed, and in a post-Brexit world, the same is true again. We had a case in around March this year, when Brexit was originally supposed to happen, where the titre was slightly under the required level, but because Brexit didn't happen, the dog was able to travel regardless, because the expected more stringent requirements weren't required so the blood test turned out not to have been necessary in the first place. (The fact that politics makes a difference is infuriating beyond belief, but that's another story.)

With Brexit now potentially due to happen in October, if you plan to travel in November, and are happy to gamble that your rabies vaccination will give a high enough titre test first time around, then you need to get your rabies vaccination by the beginning of July. If you want to have some confidence that you have time for an extra vaccination and blood test should your first one come back below the required level, and you haven't yet had a rabies vaccination, you need to do it now, so that the first blood test will be early in July and second one (if needed) would be in August, which would leave you able to travel 3 months after that, in November.

You can certainly gamble that Brexit will be postponed again, or cancelled, or that we'll somehow miraculously manage to negotiate a deal for pet travel post-Brexit, despite not having managed it in the last three years, and save yourself some money by not having the blood tests done ... that's up to you.

What I don't know (partly because we don't travel abroad with our own dog, so I've had no need to ask) is the situation for those dogs whose rabies vaccinations are not currently due for their booster.

Disclaimer: I am not a vet, much less an OV qualified one; I just work with some. In the event of any discrepancy between what I've said here, and what you are told by a qualified OV, I'm wrong, and they're right. They're the ones who have paid for the training! For further information, refer to the official DEFRA government website at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pet-travel-to-europe-after-brexit

 

[Casper46]

Casper had his booster just before we left UK in April. Our French vet then took a blood sample and we now have a new certificate with his results. He is now going to be a dual passport holder as when he goes for his return to UK vets visit he will collect his French pets passport. It might be belt and braces but it’s another less thing to think about.
It was an easier vets trip 9 years ago for his original blood test, he now weighs 34 kilos and it took 4 of us to hold him down.

 

[Wellington]

I am going to assume that in the event of Brexit actually happening, the rules will revert to as they were 20 odd years ago when the pet passports were first devised as an (almost) worst case scenario. That is pet passport, rabies vaccine, wait 30 days, positive blood test, wait six months, tick and tapeworm injection min 24 hours before return. Annual booster.

Actual worst case would be six months quarantine, but I really don’t see that coming back in, following 20 years of successful rabies prevention in the uk.

We have had the titre come back positive and the pet passport paperwork done, so I just need to book the Calais vet for our August return, if it looks like it will be needed at the time. It’s probably totally unnecessary, but Archie is too old to spend six months in quarantine and my daughter would be devastated, so I’m happy to be cautious.

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[DBK]

What I don't know (partly because we don't travel abroad with our own dog, so I've had no need to ask) is the situation for those dogs whose rabies vaccinations are not currently due for their booster.

For further information, refer to the official DEFRA government website at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pet-travel-to-europe-after-brexit

We were in this position late last year. Our dog wasn't due re-vaccination until later this year. Our vet said we can gamble on the dog passing the titre test or vaccinate the dog early, which is what we opted for.

 

[DBK]

I am going to assume that in the event of Brexit actually happening, the rules will revert to as they were 20 odd years ago when the pet passports were first devised as an (almost) worst case scenario. That is pet passport, rabies vaccine, wait 30 days, positive blood test, wait six months, tick and tapeworm injection min 24 hours before return. Annual booster.

Actual worst case would be six months quarantine, but I really don’t see that coming back in, following 20 years of successful rabies prevention in the uk.

We have had the titre come back positive and the pet passport paperwork done, so I just need to book the Calais vet for our August return, if it looks like it will be needed at the time. It’s probably totally unnecessary, but Archie is too old to spend six months in quarantine and my daughter would be devastated, so I’m happy to be cautious.

I can't see the requirements for bringing a dog back to the UK changing as these are set by the UK and have nothing to do with the EU. So worming and a fit to travel check between 24 hours and five days of arrival in the UK should be all that is required. Avoid vets close to Calais if you are going that way, I gather they are expensive. @keithchesterfield2 has a good map but I generally just use Google Maps and search for "Vet" and then read the reviews.

 

[treetops1]

My point was would a non UK dog need a blood test certificate and fitness to travel into the UK?

 

[treetops1]

Any dog will still need proof of current rabies jab to get into the UK irrespective from where it came .even if you have taken it from the UK for a weeks Holliday when you return it will still need a current rabies jab as they do not test you going out only coming back in .A none UK dog would be treat as above ,no rabies jab ,no entry. .

 

[gus-lopez]

No. According to defra my spanish dog can enter regardless of deal/no deal just on his pet passport & the usual "more than 24 hours less than 5 days " tablet nonsense.. Additionally when leaving ,with no deal , he does not require the
"10 day health check" prior to travel , as he is going home ,but will require the titre test just as if he is re-entering the EU from Morocco

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[Landy Andy]

I don’t know understand why Brexit effects rabies. Surely the rabies threat is to the uk, not mainland Europe. So why aren’t the uk making the rules about rabies?

Just because we are not part of the EU it doesn’t increase the threat of rabies.

Let’s be honest. Every vet I’ve ever spoken to about the process of travelling with pets admits it just a money making exercise.

In the end the politicians don’t want to leave, so they want it to be as complicated as possible.

 

[DBK]

I don’t know understand why Brexit effects rabies. Surely the rabies threat is to the uk, not mainland Europe. So why aren’t the uk making the rules about rabies?

Just because we are not part of the EU it doesn’t increase the threat of rabies.

Let’s be honest. Every vet I’ve ever spoken to about the process of travelling with pets admits it just a money making exercise.

In the end the politicians don’t want to leave, so they want it to be as complicated as possible.

The rules for entering the UK won't change as they are set by us. The rules for entering the EU may change depending on how/if our exit happens. The worst case is we are classed as a Third Country and this will be the default position in the event of no deal. This isn't speculation, these rules exist now. It won't stop travelling with dogs but it will add cost and need more planning. Hopefully we will be added to the list of countries which don't require the more stringent tests, but that will be for the EU to decide.

 

[Boycey]

Having read the very long entry of today about the different worst options after Brexit I have to wonder where they got the information which to me would only cause confusion in people. I have an email from the department at Defra which backs up my interpretation of the proposed regulations. Europe is not going to have people at every border checking paperwork because each country has decided to have different policies. It will be the same policy for all countries in Europe as it is now for third world countries. The length of time for having the injections and blood tests done and waiting period is as I understand it just 4 months in total. Whatever your vet says double check it with Defra. Our vets got it completely wrong. They had been giving out wrong information and admitted they had read it wrong. We have had vets in Luxembourg that got the pet passport system completely wrong. So don't take their word for it.