Passport for Pets. Don't Miss the Boat

4th November 2009






Our border terrier, Bertie has proved to be a lucky mascot after taking him with us to France. He helped us sell my late mother’s house near Agen in the Lot et Garonne and contributed to us buying our splendid new house near Bergerac in the Dordogne.

We decided to move from London to my mother’s house immediately the positive results of his blood tests following his rabies vaccination in September 2008. This meant that we had to be based in France for a minimum of six months until we could return to England with Bertie. Consequently we were able to have the house looking at its best before any visits from potential buyers – lots of cleaning and polishing inside and much mowing, weeding and planting outside The plan worked because the day the bottom fell out of the US and British stock markets we had two buyers in a contracts race both having offered the price we were asking. Amazingly the offer we accepted from an English couple, subject to a 70% mortgage from a French bank, came good and we completed the sale at the end of January 2010.

Within days of accepting the aforementioned offer I was walking Bertie round a little bastide town called Issigeac looking for a butcher for a couple of lamb chops. I noticed an impressive house in the window of an Estate Agents, called Lang and Fournier. The property had a classic, tall, sloping Perigordine roof and a courtyard surrounded by outbuildings included in the sale. The price being asked was almost identical to that accepted for my mother’s cottage and this was three times the size.

My offer was accepted and I managed to do a simultaneous completion and so was able to move straight into the new house notwithstanding it hadn’t been lived in by the previous occupants for more than three years. Bertie had again brought us luck.

The pet problem only started when we decided to get married in the Channel Islands. The papers required for a civil ceremony at our local Marie were a long as my arm. An English chum said he knew a couple who had got married on Sark. In the end we plumbed for Alderney which required us to be on the island for just five days and the only papers needed were our birth and previous marriage certificates. There was a ferry from Cherbourg direct to Alderney only six miles from France. This would be cheap and easy I thought. Bertie and I could sail as foot passengers and Lyndia, who was in London, could fly direct from Southampton to Alderney. Sadly Bertie could not travel on this route as Alderney was not classified as a port of entry for pets. Also pets can’t travel without being in a car. Instead I had to take the car ferry from St Marlow to Guernsey then fly with Bertie in his own allocated seat on one of the small twin prop Islanders that fly hourly from Guernsey to Alderney.

Despite this circuitous and expensive route it all turned out well in the end. We got married and we had great fun, including Bertie who came second in the agility class of the Alderney dog show.

We returned to the Dordogne together and were married in a beautiful little church in Monsaguel near our house in Les Mayets. (More of that in another blog) It was when we decided to return to England in October on the ferry from Bilbao that things became particularly complicated. Some of this was self induced as I totally misjudged the distance and time it would take us to get from Bergerac to Santander. We had been told it would take 5 hours but we hadn’t even reached the Spanish border in that time so you can guess – we missed the boat! This meant we had to wait for the next boat - to Plymouth instead of Portsmouth - four days later. Lyndia had to fly back to London from Bilbao the day before for an urgent business meeting. At yet further expense, Bertie had to have his inoculations for entry back into the UK all over again.

We had already been to our vet in France the morning we left but the vacination and inspection have to be carried out 24 hours before the animal leaves French or Spanish soil and not within 24 hours and not after 48 hours. This meant a second visit to a vet, this time in Spain. The vet who we visited near Bilbao thought Bertie could travel within 24 hours and stamped his passport accordingly. Once at the port the following day, with only an hour to spare, I was informed the passport was incorrectly stamped. I had to sprint, with Bertie in tow, to the nearest vet to the port in Santander. There was a queue of several other frantic ex-pats whose passports were also wrongly stamped. Another 30 euros was required and a phone call to my vet, who confirmed that Bertie had been inspected at 10 am the previous day and not 7 pm - the actual time entered in the passport. The problem was sorted with half an hour to spare before the ferry left for England. The Spanish vet in Santander must have been making a packet out of us misguided British pet owners!

Don't miss the boat!