No deal and pet travel post 29 March 2019

Yes and BF sent out the below email today, some hassle and more money at the vets but still cheaper than leaving them at home in kennels, if you can bear to do that

Travelling with a pet after 29 March 2019

After 29 March 2019, you will still be able to travel with your pet to Europe whether a deal is reached between the United Kingdom and the European Union on the terms of exit, or not. In the event of there being "No Deal", you may need to take some additional steps for travel to be possible and what follows is the best advice we've been able to secure.

The UK Government recommends that you contact your vet at least 4 months in advance of travel to check what you may need to fulfil the requirements for travel.

The requirements for travel would include making sure that your pet is effectively vaccinated against rabies. This would require:

• An up-to-date rabies vaccination.
• A blood test to demonstrate sufficient levels of rabies antibody.

The blood test would need to be carried out a minimum of 30 days after any initial rabies vaccination and a minimum of 3 months before your travel date. More information can be found at www.gov.uk/guidance/pet-travel-to-europe-after-brexit or on the Government's technical notice on Pet Travel if there's no Brexit deal.

As I don’t have a pet to take abroad and probably never will this won’t bother me.

I can only hope that the UK border authorities are vigilant about pets being brought in to the UK, by both UK and foreign nationals, and these pets have the correct health checks and certificates, .

It may improve when we leave as with the "open"borders we "enjoy?"now are allowing hundreds if not thousands of of animals being smuggled into the country now

We received the same information in an email from Eurotunnel, and we do travel with pets.  Fortunately I already knew about it so we've already arranged a first vet visit, and a blood test for her a week on Friday so we should have no problems.

Note the advice does say "in the unlikely event of not reaching a deal" - keep calm and carry on! 

Unfortunately those of us who travel with a pet, and who are likely to be in Europe on 'the day' have little choice not to 'keep calm and carry on' but to be sensible and take whatever action is required.  For us that means it makes sense to visit a vet, get a blood test which hopefully says our cat's rabies vaccination is effective, and if not to repeat the vaccination and blood test, and then we should be ok.

If you don't travel with a pet, or do, but aren't going to be in Europe until much later in the year, then you can afford to sit it out and wait....... but I would rather be safe than sorry.

A blue job?  I misread that at first. 

Sorry, I was replying to DD's astonishing admission in another thread. Delete? 

Pet border checks are done by the carrier, ie, Eurotunnel or ferry company. In more than 40 crossings we have only been checked once by Border Agency type personnel and that was at Dun Laoghaire (which is now closed) on the way back from Ireland. People are warned to take their Pet Passports with them when visiting Ireland, glad we did!!

The Pet Passport office at Eurotunnel is the only place that really checks the documentation thoroughly. I have seen people turned away because of wrong times, dates and vets details being incorrect. Once a person tried to present a photo copy of the passport. They claimed that the vet in Italy said it would be OK!!

Going backwards and forwards to France, our pet passport has been checked every time, by all the carriers we've used (DFDS, P&0, Brittany Ferries and Eurotunnel) on the way back to the UK - and out cat has been scanned to make sure the microchip is still working.  I have seen British and other nationalities turned away by Eurotunnel if their pet passports/microchip isn't correct.

On another forum this week someone reported that their pet was unable to travel because the original rabies vaccination was done two days before her pet was twelve weeks old - and she had to leave him in Calais at a sympathetic vet's surgery.