Taking A Dog To France – A Complete Guide

We are currently travelling all around the UK and Europe with our dog Lottie, and before we set off on our trip there was a lot we needed to learn about taking a dog To France & Europe.

Lottie had never left the UK before and this was the first time for us to take a pet abroad, so there was a lot for us to think about and learn, especially as we were going to be travelling for quite a long time.

We travel with our dog in a motorhome so the guidance in this post is all specific to that and relevant to motorhome travel, if you plan to travel in a different way then of course the guidance may be different, and you will need to do your research and look into this.

We wanted to share with you what we have learnt as there is a lot of preparation required to take your dog to Europe, but it’s all totally worth it when you see them enjoying travelling and having adventures with you!

Europe Travel with a dog – Requirements

In order for your pet to safely travel to Europe, there are some specific requirements:

• Your pet needs to be microchipped
• Your pet needs an animal health certificate / pet passport
• Your pet need a rabies vaccine

How do I get an Animal Health Certificate?

From January 2021 (post Brexit) an Animal Health Certificate is a document that is required for a pet to travel to Europe from the UK if they do not have an EU pet passport.

An Animal Health Certificate must be completed and certified by an Official Veterinarian (OV) approved by the APHA (Animal and Plant Health Agency).

Prior to Brexit, you would need a pet passport for your dog to travel to Europe. Now, this has been replaced by a document called an animal health certificate which you need to travel to EU or Northern Ireland, and you need to get this no more than 10 days before you travel and this needs to be issued by an official vet.

If you have a pet passport that was issued prior to Brexit then you can still use this, the animal health certificate is only required if you don’t already have a passport.

When we needed to get an animal health certificate, we called the vets that we usually go to which is a vets 4 pets branch, and they were able to issue the animal health certificate for us.

When you go to get this from your vet you will need proof of your dog’s microchip date and vaccination history. This animal health certificate will then be valid for 4 months for onward travel within the EU or 4 months for re-entry to Great Britain.

The new animal health certificate cost us £175, but we do know that this can vary massively in all different vets.

We even had different quotes from 2 different Vets 4 Pets stores, so it is well worth ringing around your local vets to find a good price.

The animal health certificate should be a recognised document across the EU so we have been informed that there is no specific need to have it printed out in the languages of all of the different countries you are going to, you just need it to be the version for the first country that you are going to enter, which for us, was France.

TIP – The animal health certificate needs to be completed correctly, and there are some very specific requirements with this paperwork, the Eurotunnel have some guidance on their website which we found helpful – What your vet needs to know about your pet’s official travel documents – Eurotunnel Le Shuttle Support

How to get your dog an EU Pet Passport

So as mentioned previously, since Brexit, pet passports can no longer be issued in the UK, you need to get an animal health certificate to take your dog cat or ferret abroad.

The animal health certificate covers up to five pets but it only allows you to travel for short trips of up to 4 months in Europe before you would need to come back to the UK to get another one. So how do you get around this if you want to travel for longer?

You need to get an animal health certificate to get yourself to Europe, and then when you’re in Europe, you need to find a vet to issue you an EU pet passport. This is what we did, as we knew we wanted to travel for longer than 4 months.

France would be the obvious place to try and get a France pet passport issued, as for most people travelling to Europe, especially via the Eurotunnel, this is the first country that you enter.

However, we had heard some rumours that France were really starting to crack down on issuing pet passports to people from the UK, as they were being bombarded with so many requests, so we decided not to try to get a passport in France, but to try Germany instead.

We just searched for vets local to where we were staying in Germany and asked if we could get an EU pet travel passport issued, and they were happy to do this. All they needed to do was to check the animal health certificate and give our dog a quick health check, and that was all! We walked away with a full pet travel passport at the cost of 19euros.

As part of the requirements for taking your dog to Europe, you need to get them a rabies vaccine, which you can read more about in the next section of this post.

Once you get an EU pet passport, a UK vet cannot record anything in this passport, otherwise it becomes invalid. This meant that the vet couldn’t copy over the details of the rabies vaccine that we had in the UK to the new EU pet passport.

This meant that we had to get a new rabies vaccine, issued by a vet in the EU, to record it in the pet passport. Again, we went to a vet in Germany who were happy to do this for us.

The rabies vaccine lasts for 3 years, and our dogs original rabies vaccine had not yet expired, but this doesn’t matter. We were assured by official veterinarian that it is not harmful for the dog to have another one.

So in total, with the cost of the new passport and the new rabies vaccination, the EU pet passport cost us around 70 euros. This passport will now last our dogs lifetime, there is no expiry date, as long as we keep up to date with the rabies vaccinations.

This does mean that we always have to get a rabies vaccination administered in Europe every 3 years in order for the EU issued pet passport to be valid, but we don’t mind that, any excuse to get back to travelling Europe, we’re happy with!

Rabies Vaccine

Your pet will also need a rabies vaccine and you must wait 21 days after the vaccine before you travel and keep on top of booster vaccinations, the current rabies vaccination generally lasts 3 years.

Your pet’s vaccination record in their animal health certificate must show:

• Your pet’s date of birth
• Microchip number, date it was put in or read, and where it is on your pet’s body
• Vaccination date
• Vaccine manufacturer and product name
• Vaccine batch number
• Date the vaccination is valid until
• The vet’s signature and contact details

Tapeworm treatment for dogs

A vet must treat your dog for tapeworm and record it in the pet’s animal health certificate if you’re travelling directly to:

Finland Ireland Malta Northern Ireland Norway The treatment date must be no less than 24 hours and no more than 120 hours (5 days) before you arrive.

You must have a tapeworm treatment administered to enter back into the UK after being in Europe too.

The tapeworm treatment administered here must: be approved for use in the country it’s being given in and contain praziquantel or an equivalent proven to be effective against the Echinococcus multilocularis tapeworm.

Rabies Titre Test

The rabies titre test is also known as the rabies antibody test, rabies neutralising antibody titre (RNAT) test or rabies blood test, as it measures the amount of antibodies produced in the blood of your dog to rabies. It is basically a blood test that confirms the effectiveness of the rabies vaccine in your dog.

If you’re travelling to an EU country, you won’t need this, all you will need is the record that your dog has had a current rabies vaccination, and you will be good to go.

There are some countries however in Europe where there are different rules and there is a higher chance of catching rabies, so you need to have the rabies titer test too.

These countries are generally countries that are in Europe but are non EU countries, and you need the titre test to get back into an EU country from these countries.

Albania

Moldova

Montenegro

Serbia

Ukraine

Turkey

The rabies titre test is a blood test that needs to be taken after your dog has had their rabies vaccine, and this needs to be done around a month after the rabies vaccine.

The best thing to do is to get this done with plenty of time to spare in before you leave the UK to travel to any of these countries.

The blood sample will need to be taken by a vet and then sent off to a laboratory for testing, and there are only a certain amount of labs across Europe that do this testing, so again this can take a little while.

Occasionally, A pet can fail the titre test even if they have had a valid rabies vaccination, and then another test will need to be done, so it really is best to give yourself a good 3/4 months to sort out this test.

TIP – You can check the list of exempt countries for the rabies titre test here – Listing of territories and non-EU countries (europa.eu)

Eurotunnel Pet Reception Check-in Folkestone

The Eurotunnel at Folkestone seem like they’ve really considered everything to make sure you and your pet can travel as comfortably as possible. We found them to be so accommodating and friendly in the pet check-in reception.

Once you get to the pet reception, they will ask to check your dogs animal health certificate or pet passport, they will check the dog’s microchip and that’s it, it’s a really easy process.

The lady who checked all of our documentation even gave us lots of advice regarding animal health certificates and pet passports.

There is a dog walking area outside of the pet reception with lots of cool agility style activities for your dog to do whilst you wait to board the tunnel. There is even a separate dog area to this for female dogs in season which we thought was a really great idea.

The Eurotunnel really did seem to us like the perfect way to travel to Europe with a dog, especially with the outbound journey from Folkestone to Calais being only 35 minutes, and all being able to stay together and not having to leave the dog on their own, as you may have to if you got the ferry.

At only £22 per pet each way also, it is not too expensive, and we really think that the Eurotunnel is the best and easiest way to travel to Europe with your pet.

Other things to think about

• Dog food and how much you might need to take and also can you get this through customs. Regular dog food is not allowed but if your dog has a special diet with a note from a vet to confirm, then this is accepted.
• How you will secure your dog in a motorhome or campervan
• The weather – will they need a warm coat or a cooling coat etc
• Do you have the best motorhome layout for dogs?
• Harness and lead – depending on where you are going to be going, you may need to consider getting a good quality harness and lead, especially if you plan to do more adventurous travel and activities like hiking and climbing
• Does your pet take any medication that you may need to take with you?
• Does your dog require any regular vet treatments or have any health conditions? – There are vets all over Europe and they are pretty easily accessible, so if you do ever need to see a vet whilst you’re travelling, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

Summary

Being able to travel all around Europe with your dog is the best thing in our opinion. We’re so happy that we get to have the most amazing experiences and bring our dog Lottie along with us to experience it too, we just want to give her the best life ever.

There is a lot of prior planning and preparation to do, but with the know-how, you can get it done and have the best time travelling with your furry best friend!

Keep up with our full-time van life travels over on our YouTube channel! If you

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