This is a story about someone that I know that I met in Central America and how I recently came to find out that she has been locked out of her own damn country because she doesn't have the correct paperwork with her to get her dog back into the USA. She initially went down to Mexico and later Nicaragua and brought her medium-sized dog with her on the trip. I thought this was a mistake because of all the complications that come along with traveling with an animal but when I met her she clearly had a very close attachment to the dog and wasn't just on a vacation so I guess I can understand why someone would do that.
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Not her, but you get the idea
So what happened was that she was traveling indefinitely but recently she found out that a family member is in poor health and she wants to get back to the United States to visit. Upon trying to book her flight she discovered that importing a dog into the USA is no longer allowed without certain paperwork that wasn't necessary when she left the United States over a year ago. Back when she left, one only need to carry a copy of the vaccination records but unbeknownst to her, they now require the original book to bring the dog back in. This is not an insurmountable objective, but the original documents are somewhere in her apartment in a city where her family members do not live. So she has to have a neighbor go into her house and try to find the book and then mail it to her if she is going to have any chance of getting back in.
So I am a little curious as to why the original booklet needs to be part of the equation. Is there a massive dog-smuggling ring that also specializes in Photoshop that I am not aware of? This regulation was pointed out by a lot of people but not enough and not widespread enough to find her in the small town that she was operating out of for the past 6 months.
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This is new information to me but apparently dogs have passports of sorts as well and I guess the lesson here is that you should probably travel with this in order to prevent problems like this from happening.
In the meantime her departure is going to be set back by at least a couple of weeks and although I do not know the details I hope that this slight delay doesn't have some sort of lasting and horrible effect on whoever it is that she is going to visit that is very ill.
I suppose the real lesson here, animal aside, is that it is kind of important when you are traveling to have the originals of all your important documents with you and work pretty hard to make sure that you don't lose them. I would imagine that she could probably get a replacement or access some records by her veterinarian but herein lies another problem.
According to her, animals that have spent 6 months in "at risk" countries also can not get back in even if they were vaccinated in the USA. In this situation, I don't know what she would do but I have been informed that the process to get the dog back into USA will be very complicated and expensive and involves months of time to prepare.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that if you are one of the few people out there that is traveling with a pet and are from the United States, you are likely going to face the exact same thing when you try to go back. BE WARNED because apparently you can't just claim ignorance when you turn up at customs in the USA... the animal will be sent back to where it came from at your expense and in the case of my friend, that would mean she would need to go back as well because airports will contact some sort of animal control and after a certain amount of time the dog will simply be put down and they'll probably send you a bill for it.
I think in her situation that she should just have a friend look after the dog while she goes back to see the ill family member and then come back to it later. I do think it is kind of fucky that her own government would do this though.
I understand loving pets and what not but in my mind it seems like the best idea would probably be to leave the dog at home when you go on these trips unless you are planning on them being one-way.