Dog Travel :
US to the EU
All you need to know about flying to Europe with your dog!
Lisbon, Portugal
Alice and I spent July and August of 2019 in Portugal, and we are excited to return to Europe later this year! When I first considered spending my entire summer abroad, I knew I had to bring Alice with me. I was so surprised when, after doing some research and talking to my vet, I discovered it was actually quite a simple process to bring a dog to the European Union from the United States! Here’s what you need to know…
Your dog must be micro-chipped and have an up-to-date rabies vaccination. The microchip must be ISO-compliant. If your dog got the microchip in the United States, it is probably ISO-compliant - your vet can check to make sure. Alice has a PetLink microchip, which is acceptable! The rabies vaccination must be given more than 21 days before your dog enters the EU. The rules for rabies vaccines are different for young puppies, though.
Ten days (or fewer) before your arrival in the EU, your pup needs an appointment with a USDA-accredited veterinarian where they will fill out the necessary paperwork for your journey. Not all veterinarians in the US are qualified to do this. At our vet, Gotham Veterinary Center, only two of the six doctors could sign the paperwork for Alice, so make sure you get an appointment early and confirm that your veterinarian is qualified! Our vet, Dr. Carbonell, knew exactly what was required when we told her (months ahead of time) that we were traveling to Portugal.
When we arrived for our appointment, she already had the paperwork printed and mostly filled out. After the appointment was completed, the paperwork had to be mailed to APHIS. In New York, that meant it had to be mailed to Albany, then mailed back to me. To ensure that we received the paperwork back from Albany in time, I paid extra for overnight shipping and provided a two-day shipping return envelope for them. If your state’s APHIS location is not nearby, I recommend seeing your veterinarian 9 or 10 days before your EU arrival date to make sure all of this paperwork gets back to you in plenty of time!
You can find more information on the USDA website!
When we checked in for our flight, the Delta employees looked at the paperwork but didn’t seem to really know what they were looking for. So they let us go, and we crossed our fingers (and toes) that everything would work out! When we arrived in Lisbon, no one was concerned about Alice at passport control. After asking an airport employee where to go to have her documents checked, we headed to the veterinarian services department which was located in baggage claim. I pressed the doorbell, a man opened the door, took the documents, and went back inside. Several minutes later he reemerged, pet Alice, and sent us to customs. The customs agent barely looked at the paperwork and waved us on.
I learned later that the airport veterinarian had taken the last page of Alice’s paperwork. I didn’t notice until about a week later that page 8 was missing and was in a minor panic about it! But I guess that’s what was supposed to happen, and it wasn’t necessary for our return to the US.
Returning to the States was a bit more time-consuming. We flew back through Boston Logan Airport and had to go to a separate customs area from baggage claim. Even though I was the only person there with two employees, everything seemed to take such a long time - keep this in mind if you have a connecting flight coming back into the US! They looked through Alice’s paperwork (the same documents we had used to enter in Lisbon), but were mostly interested in the rabies vaccine information.
Find more information about returning to the United States with a dog on the CDC website!
Overall, the process of obtaining the necessary documentation and getting Alice through each airport was quite simple and straightforward! I’m not at all nervous about doing it again in April!
