Paperwork to Travel With Your Dog

In this post you can read about the super fun process of all the necessary paperwork and logistics involved in crossing borders with your dog before you decide whether to take the next steps. Be ready for bureaucracy that will test your patience to the limits. But I am here to help & hopefully this article will make things a little more clear and point you in right direction. The rules can change so always refer to government websites for up to date requirements. I outline the process for the destinations that I have taken my dog to. For most countries, it’s a similar process where you get your licensed vet to fill out an international health certificate and then you bring it to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency for them to endorse it at a federal level before you take your pet on a flight. Some countries have their own version of the international health certificate that you will need to use, which you can find on the CFIA website. If you are American or you are bringing you dog from America to another country, then it is the same process, but instead of the CFIA, you would be getting the health certificate endorsed by the United States Department of Agriculture.

Bringing A Dog from Canada to Nicaragua

What you need from your vet: A Trilingual International Health Certificate and Certificates of Vaccination

A Canadian International Health Certificate for Dogs and Cats. This is a form that you print off from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency that you can find on the government of Canada website. Make sure to print off the trilingual option as it needs to be in Spanish! From the CFIA website that I have linked here, you can scroll down on their page to the list of countries. At the very top of the list, you can find the Canadian International Health Certificate for Dogs and Cats. Click on this to access the form that you need to export your dog or cat from Canada to Nicaragua. It is the generic one that Canada had to export dogs and cats to a country that does not have their own specific form they have negotiated with Canada.

Next, take this form to your licensed veterinarian and they fill it out. After they have filled it out, you need to bring this form (and the vaccine certificates) to a government office called the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Use the government of Canada website to find the CFIA office nearest you and then you need to call or e-mail to make an appointment. Make sure to make your appointment with the CFIA as soon as you know your travel dates because they can get busy. At the appointment, you just bring the paperwork and not your pet. At the appointment they will check all the documents and then they will endorse it with their signature and official stamp. Now they are very particular so make sure you have everything correctly filled out. When you go to the CFIA office, you must also bring supporting documents - Each vaccination that your pet has had which is listed on the health certificate must also be accompanied by individual vaccination certificates. The vet charged $200 CAD to fill out the international health certificate. The vet also gives your dog a physical exam prior to filling out the paperwork. The CFIA charged me $20 to endorse the form. On the form you must also have your vet fill in that your pet is on a dewormer as well as flea/tick treatment.

We had a 3 hour layover in Mexico. All our checked bags were supposed to go straight through to Managua, but we were told we would have to collect our dog from the baggage area, and re-check her for the next flight. The reason they have you do this is because you have to visit the Zoo Sanitary Sagarpa or SENASICA office in the airport. This was a small kiosk located after we went through immigration and it was right by the baggage area where our dog rolled out on the conveyer belt. They checked that we had the correct paperwork to pass through. They made copies of her international health certificate and they stamped it with a transit stamp.  

Now along with our international health certificate that was required to be endorsed by the CFIA in order to export Ducky to Nicaragua, the airline told me that I needed a health certificate to bring her through Mexico and I thought they meant that I needed a second one in addition to the one I already had for Nicaragua. The airline told me it had to have been completed within 5 days before the flight whereas Nicaragua was 10 days so I made sure to get it completed only within 5 days before our flight so that I could also meet the requirements for transiting through Mexico. In Mexico, they made copies of and stamped the paper. Note that my destination country is listed as Nicaragua. Make several copies of your international health certificate after it has been endorsed as well as the vaccination certificates. Bring all paperwork with you and keep the originals until you get to your destination (Nicaragua in this case) where they may take the originals.

Canada to Costa Rica:

If you are going to Costa Rica, they have their own international health form that you are required to use which is specific to the exportation of your dog/cat from Canada to Costa Rica. This one is a different international health certificate than the one that you would use for Nicaragua. It can also be found on the government of Canada website, which I will link here, but you need to scroll down through the list of countries and click on Costa Rica. Then you will have access to the export form that is specific to Costa Rica. Here is the link to the page that will give you access to the export forms for each country. This certificate needs to be endorsed by the CFIA in Canada before you fly. The CFIA may send you a link with the correct international health certificate when you make your appointment depending on who you are communicating with. Make sure you give yourself a few days as something will almost certainly not be correct and you will likely have to go back to your vet and ask them re-do something before going back to the CFIA to get the endorsement. Vets are used to filling out thee forms but there are different particularities for each country that they are not familiar with - so the CFIA knows all of these and it’s their job to make sure everything is correct in order for you to export your pet to the particular country and its requirements….so there is a good chance they will send you back to your vet with something that needs to be corrected after their first review of your paperwork. So my advice is to give yourself two extra days between your CFIA appointment and your scheduled flight in case this happens. My vet put a different lot number for the rabies vaccine on the health form than they had on the vaccination certificate. Another problem that came up was the international health certificate I had saved in my email (to be printed out and filled out by vet) was actually not the right one. The form had since been updated about a month before I was supposed to be leaving so I had to drive all the way back to the vet with the updated version and bring it back to the CFIA (could not be e-mailed as it is a legal document and needs to be the original form that they endorse). Thank god I left an extra day, but my vet is also a 2 hour drive each way from the nearest CFIA office. Oh well, not as bad as the person who had their appointment in front mine and had to drive 10 hours! That’s what I get for trying to be organized and sending myself downloaded form that needed to be printed off in advance… they go and change it! So do not download the form until the day you go to the vet. Instead e-mail yourself or make a note of the directions of where to find the form or the link to the page with the download so that you know you have the most up-to-date version. Cross check that the lot numbers and expiry dates and all the other info on the vaccine certificates match up to the numbers/info that the vet has written on the international health certificate before you take these documents to the CFIA. 

When I was looking at requirements for entry to Nicaragua, I read that you only need the rabies vaccine certificate and that you do not need the individual vaccine certificates for all the other vaccines - you only need to have them listed on the health certificate. I asked the vet for the additional vaccine certs to be safe, but he said they don’t require those ones - just rabies. Having the others listed on the health cert was enough. Now of course I go to the CFIA and they said that they will not endorse the health certificate because the vet has listed 4 vaccines, but there is no evidence of them (because I did not have the certificates for lyme, bordatella, leptospirosis, and DA2PP). So of course when I went back to the vet I asked for each of those vaccine certs to be printed out and signed. So just have everything to be safe. I know for costa rica, you also need all the supporting documents for each vaccine as well.

Finally we were ready to go. I made sure to get a waterproof folder to keep all these precious documents in as you never know when a rainstorm may hit or something spills in your bag.

Bringing A Dog to the UK from Canada

This one is more complicated. If you are flying into the UK, all dogs have to arrive in cargo (even if they are small enough to fly in the cabin with you) unless they are service dogs. This is because all the animals arriving must undergo a check by a veterinarian at the airport before you are reunited with your dog. You have to request this appointment in advance and when we tried, they were booked for 3 months in advance and we had already booked our flights from Mexico to the UK because even after hours of research, I found nothing about needing to let them know so far in advance. So before you book your flight, make sure you have an appointment. Then after you book your flight, you get a Great Britain animal health certificate which your vet will fill out within 10 days of your arrival in Great Britain. Within 5 days of your arrival, your dog must have a tapeworm treatment that the vet signs off on. So really, the certificate can’t have a date from the vet that is prior to the 5 day timeframe otherwise they will not endorse it if the tapeworm treatment was taken and signed more than 5 days prior. What I did is I had my vet fill out the health certificate prior so that I could review it and then I took it back, with some corrections and at the same time, they dated it and filled in the tapeworm treatment section. This time, when I went to the CFIA, nothing was wrong and they endorsed it without needing any corrections. But I had to go back to the vet maybe 3 times prior because I noticed mistakes on the health certificate like my dog’s date of birth was wrong and and it wasn’t filled out in the correct colour of ink. So make sure to review the paperwork after you get it back from the vet because they don’t necessarily know the requirements for each country and the CFIA is very specific about how these forms need to be filled out.