You learn from your mistakes, right?
It does not need to be like this every time. In this post, you will read how was my experience, and what went wrong (and right) in my first travel experience abroad with my puppy.
First things first. Let me introduce my baby: my girl is a 4 years old Staffordshire Bull Terrier, very spoiled and FULL of energy. By the way, her name is Leela – because I’m crazy about Sci-Fi movies and Futurama is my favorite science fiction sitcom. Turanga Leela is one of the main characters.
When my husband and I decided to go to Vancouver, our main concern was her. She is not an emotional support/psychiatric service animal, so there was no way to keep her our side during the travel.
We did a lot (really, a looooot) of online research. However, the most useful information has been founded on these websites:
- United – PetSafe Pet Transport & Shipping
- Worldwide Animal Travel
- IPATA – The Pet Shipping Experts
- Pet Relocation
We decided to call United’s customer service, to avoid any misunderstand and also to clarify all our 500,010 doubts (so many doubts… poor guy that answered our call…).
Anyways, this poor guy, actually, was a sweetie heart called Renato, that was truly willing to help us, and later became our guide in this journey to find the best solution to fit our needs. He strongly recommended us to hire a Pet Logistic company to help us. The thing is, at that time, our plan to get to Vancouver was to take a flight from Rio, with a connection in Toronto. However, the Ontario Government has a breed-specific legislation, and Leela’s breed is banned in there, period.
So, we follow Renato’s recommendation, and we hired a company called ESA Cargo to provide our baby’s logistics. They were amazing from the beginning until the end, and we – finally – could focus on other things that were delayed because of this matter.
All paperwork has been done by them, the only “tasks” they gave us were: provide a vet health certificate 3 days before our flight, do not feed her (not even water), 10 hours before our flight and, under no circumstances, give her any medication (for example, a sedative) to try to make her relax.
Everything was all set, and we were ready to go. By the way, ESA Cargo also provided land logistic, because it was needed to take her to the airport 8 hours before our flight (airport agents must “inspected” her, as well as, all documents).
Look at her… So cute 🙂
Next post I will talk about her landing and adaptation. Stay tuned.
See you around 🙂
Traveling with your pet to Vancouver 