Taking the dogs to Spain.

Our 2 pups were always part of the plan in our move to Spain, well one was, at the time we originally talked of moving I was only planning on having one dog, still the same applies to 2 as it does to 1.

Taking them to Spain is not a problem, however, I do want to be able to bring them back with us when we visit. I don’t have any knowledge of kennels in Spain and so I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving them. Fortunately, there is a system whereby they can travel without quarantine – all they need is a ‘pet passport’ or what’s known as the Pets Travel Scheme.

Full details are available from the DEFRA website.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/quarantine/pets/index.htm

Our local vet where the pups are registered deal with pet passports so when I spoke with them about it they were fully aware of what was needed. The first step is to have the dogs micro-chipped, this is so that they can check that they have the correct dog when giving the necessary jabs. The pups were micro-chipped at 10 weeks. It’s a similar routine to them having their jabs and neither dog particularly objected. It’s quite odd afterwards as the chips are large enough to be able to feel them under the skin. After a couple of weeks, the dogs have grown and put a bit of weight on and we can’t feel them anymore, but they have been checked to make sure they can be scanned and read.

At 12 weeks the pups were old enough to have their rabies jabs, which they had last Friday. As with any jabs, it makes them sleepy but I think that’s the stress of the visit, not the jabs themselves. Neither pup has had any adverse reaction to the jabs, and we now have to wait for 30 days and then get a blood test done for each pup which will be sent off the DEFRA for analysis to make sure that the rabies jabs have worked correctly. Our vets have said that the results can take 4-6 weeks to come back and if either or both are negative we will have to go through another process of injection and blood tests. This is one key thing that could delay our move to Spain as we will not move out there until the dogs are ok.

Once we know we have good blood tests we will be able to take the dogs to Spain with us. We will not be able to bring them back for their first visit until 6 months after the date of the blood test that resulted in a positive result. We can only hope that both dogs get good blood tests together, that would be the ideal, but if they don’t then we’ll just have to start again as necessary.