International Pet Shipping

These get confused constantly, and the confusion is expensive. An import permit is issued by the destination country and gives your pet permission to enter. Not every country requires one. Where it is required, it usually has to be applied for weeks in advance and it often has an expiry date, which means applying too early is as much of a problem as applying too late.

The health certificate is issued at your end. A veterinarian examines the pet and completes the certificate, and for most international destinations that certificate then has to be endorsed by USDA APHIS before it is valid. Endorsement fees start at $101. Most destinations also impose a short window between the examination and the flight, commonly ten days, so the certificate cannot be obtained early and held.

A rabies titer test, sometimes written as a FAVN or RNATT, measures the antibody level in your pet blood to confirm the rabies vaccination actually worked. It is not a vaccination and it is not a formality. Where a country requires one, the blood is drawn by your veterinarian, sent to an approved laboratory, and the result starts a waiting period before the pet may enter.

That waiting period is the single largest variable in an international move. It runs three months for many destinations and considerably longer for the rabies-free island countries. If the sample is drawn late, or the first result comes back below the threshold and has to be repeated, the whole move slides by the length of the wait. This is why we start with dates and testing rather than with fares, and why an owner who calls us six weeks before a move to Australia is usually calling about a move that cannot happen for months.

A pet traveling in the hold needs an IATA-compliant container: rigid, ventilated on the required number of sides, secured with metal hardware rather than plastic clips, and sized so the animal can stand fully upright, turn around and lie down naturally. Undersizing is the most common reason a pet is refused at the counter, and check-in is a bad time to find out.

The crate also decides the aircraft. A large container does not fit the hold of a regional jet, and on some wide-body aircraft the door dimensions rather than the hold volume set the limit. That is why a large dog sometimes cannot fly out of a smaller airport at all, and why the routing on a big dog is often built around the aircraft rather than around the schedule. We size the crate before we quote the freight, because on the hold routes the crate dimensions are what the freight is priced on.

Three modes, three different price brackets. In the cabin means a small pet under the seat in a soft carrier, which most airlines cap at roughly 15 to 20 pounds combined with the carrier and which very few permit on long-haul routes into strict destinations. Checked baggage means the pet flies in the hold on the same booking as its owner, which is simpler but which many carriers have withdrawn.

Manifested cargo means the pet travels as a separate shipment with its own air waybill. It is the mode most international moves actually use, it is the only mode some destinations accept, and it is the one that requires a licensed agent at both ends. It is also the mode that gives the pet the most attention: cargo staff at the major gateways handle live animals daily, and the animal is checked in at a dedicated counter rather than at a passenger desk.

The flight is not the end of the job, and this is the part low quotes tend to leave out. On arrival the shipment has to be cleared: documents presented to the border agency, any inspection completed, fees paid, and the pet released from the airline facility. Some countries release directly at the airport within an hour or two. Others hold the animal for an inspection appointment, and a few require a quarantine stay at a government facility booked and paid for in advance.

We arrange the clearance and the onward delivery as part of the move rather than handing you a phone number on the day. When you compare quotes, ask whether arrival handling is inside the number, because it is rarely small and it is frequently absent.

Three failures account for most of the trouble on international routes, and all three are timing failures rather than accidents.

A titer sample drawn a week too late pushes the earliest legal entry date past the move date, and nothing can compress it. A health certificate obtained before the destination window opens expires in transit, which turns a valid document into an invalid one without anything visibly changing. And an import permit applied for at the same time as the flight booking arrives after the flight, because the two are issued on unrelated timetables by unrelated bodies.

The fourth, less common but more disruptive, is a carrier withdrawing live animal acceptance on a route between the quote and the flight. It happens, usually seasonally. We rebook rather than leaving you to, and we keep a second routing in reserve on the routes where it is likeliest.

Every destination we serve has its own page, with the entry requirements, the documents, the timeline and the fees set out in full rather than summarized. Start at the international pet shipping destinations index and pick the country you are moving to.

If you want the cost side first, the pet shipping cost calculator carries a route-by-route breakdown with every government fee linked to the schedule that sets it. For species-specific detail, see dog transport, cat transport and bird and exotic pet transport. Moving within the United States instead? See domestic pet shipping.

Tell us the destination, the species and breed, the approximate weight, and when you need to be there. We will tell you whether the timeline is achievable, what the testing calendar looks like, and what the move costs, before you commit to anything.