International Health Certificates | Traveling with Pets

Hey guys, my name is Dr. Larry here at Heron Lakes Animal Hospital. I'm going to talk to you really quickly about international health certificates and traveling internationally. First things first, when you're going to travel outside the United States, that's when you need an international health certificate. It does require a veterinary office visit, and it also requires that that veterinarian is certified to go ahead and fill out international health certificates. So one thing that you're going to do, once you confirm that your veterinarian can fill out those international health certificates, you're going to want to go ahead and let them know which country it is you're planning on travel to. The reason being is because not every country has the same international health certificate documentation. And so if you plan on trying to make this as quick a visit as possible, your veterinarian may have not filled that out before. And it's going to take them a long time to go ahead and figure out how to fill it out properly. The other worst case scenario is that they fill it out improperly. You go to the USDA office, they tell you that it's filled out incorrectly, then you have to go back to your veterinarian. And so to try and prevent that back and forth. If you can let your veterinarian know ahead of time what country it is you're planning on traveling to with your furry family member, that will save you and your veterinarian a lot of time and headaches. Okay? Now the other thing that you need to take into consideration is when you are traveling internationally, you need to have an appointment with the USDA office within 10 days of traveling internationally. If you do it on 11 days, which is within travel. So the 11 days before, it's not going to work. So it has to be within 10 days. Okay? The other thing that you need to take into consideration when traveling internationally is you need to know whether or not your pet travels well on planes. If they do not, you're going to need to go ahead and try and figure out what medication or combination of anti anxiety treatments will help keep your pet calm during travel. Now, be aware that most airlines do not want their patients or pets sedated because they do not want to take any responsibility if something happens to them while they're beneath the cabin. So those are some things that you need to take into consideration when traveling internationally and when you're trying to get international health certificates. If you guys have any comments about this particular topic or if there's something you want me to talk about in the future, leave it in the comment box it's you found this helpful? Give us a thumbs up and subscribe and share with others who you think might find this helpful. Thanks for watching and have a great day.