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Health certificates and pet travel.

Planning A Trip Traveling with your pet has become a much more popular option in the last 10 years, and accordingly, regulations and requirements have become more strict. If you plan on traveling with your pet, PACK is here to help you with any veterinary exams or vaccines you require, but we always insist that clients research and plan well in advance of any travel, because requirements like vaccination sometimes require weeks to months of forward planning in order to be ready.

Domestic Travel

Many airlines have specific requirements about pets that will be traveling onboard nowadays. We always recommend that clients inquire with their airline about what, if any, requirements they must fulfill. If all they require is a proof of vaccination, then our staff will be happy to print or email this to you. Some airlines also require an exam confirming good health ranging from <10 days to <30 days before your trip. We are happy to help schedule these. A fee will be charged for preparing the proof-of-health certificate.

International Travel

Unfortunately the requirements to take your pet to another country vary greatly depending on the country or countries that you plan to visit. Internationally exporting a pet is controlled by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) within the USDA. They have created and maintain a very current website listing all the requirements of destination countries, and this should be your first source of preparation:

If your destination is not on this website, then we recommend you contact the embassy directly, so that you get the most accurate advice for navigating customs.

Next Steps

Once you are aware of your requirements and travel dates, our doctors and staff at PACK are happy to help you work toward making sure that all requirements are met. In many cases vaccine titers can take 1-2 months to get results, while vaccinations may require a 3 week post-vaccine waiting period; therefore forward planning is the key to smooth travel and we are here to help!

USDA-Accredited

Most countries require a health screening/exam by an USDA-accredited veterinarian 10 or less days before travel. All of the doctors at PACK Animal Care are USDA-accredited, so that they can help you with these. A fee will be charged for this type of appointment, since they involve a large volume of complicated paperwork and medical record review. At the conclusion, we will consolidate all forms and certificates so that the entire application can be sent physically or digitally (depending on the destination country). Should your destination require it, we will also help to coordinate any deworming that needs to occur.

Here To Guide You We know that this can be a very stressful process, and we want to assist and guide you through it so that it can be as straightforward as possible, so please reach out as early in the process as possible. You will be charged for the health exam, but we do not charge for any verbal assistance in preparation for your trip. If problems arise, we will do our best to fix them in any way we can. Please remember that we are offering our help to our clients, but PACK is only liable for the accuracy of our exams and veterinary health forms USDA documentation, based solely on the records that the client provides. PACK is not liable for denied USDA approval, failed titer results, missing documents that were never submitted to us, or overall failure to make your departure.