Bringing Pets To Australia

Wow, its a lot of work to bring a couple of pets to Australia!

We have two beautiful little dogs and a cat who are so totally part of the family. I have literally spent thirty to forty hours researching, faxing, emailing and phoning importers and kennels and vets and the moon.

Its crazy how you can ask some companies for a quote and they don't respond for days. Others are so expensive its just crazy.

I am currently moving my three pets to Sydney from a country that is not on the "allowed list" to Australia. This means that my pets must first go to an acceptable country for 6 months where they can be tested by "trusted" vets and then only can they be imported to Sydney where we will live.

The whole journey will take about seven months as there is state vet quarantine in both South Africa and Australia. read $$$$

I am exporting pets from the Philippines to Australia.

Firstly, the Philippines is not the easiest place to get things done. A lot of the exporters are fly by night, and when they hear you are a foreigner or expat they load the quote. Seriously? We are not dumb mister Filipino!

After going through a list of the main removal companies who all quoted very high, I ended up phoning the airlines myself and got put through to the airlines Cargo office, who, because its the Philippines, don't actually have their own offices so I got put through to a recognized agent.

I got put through to Aero international Freight forwarding they quoted me about USD $2050 to pickup and fly three small animals using Singapore Airlines via Singapore to South Africa. This is not including the IAT approved pet crate Kennel things I have to buy. They were Friendly and helpful and were the cheapest by far. The others were all at the USD $3300 mark.

They tried Emirates but this was not an option as they go via Dubai and they wont take pets in transit on their planes unless the have a special RNATT rabies test three months prior to leaving. Luckily other airlines don't require this.

Going via South Africa is also much cheaper than going six months in Malaysia which is expensive despite being closer and flights are shorter and cheaper. I got a quote for USD $30000 - seriously people! - they just sit in a  Kennel and eat kibbles!

Ok to get from the Philippines to South Africa there are number of things to be done.

So to get out of the Philippines all your rabies and other Vaccinations have to be up to date and your vet/shipper has to get a export certificate from somewhere in Manila before they can fly.

Also, in order for your pets to go to South Africa, you have to do the following :

Dogs will go into quarantine in South Africa for 6 to 14 days.
You need to apply for an import certificate for quarantine.
You need to deposit some money into a SA state vet bank
You need to send the application and deposit by fax to south Africa quarantine - to book a place.
They send it to the import permit place to get an import permit made.
You then need to phone them a few times to manage it along.
You need to organize a courier to pick up the docs and bring them to you in the Philippines.

Also. For dogs, blood needs to be drawn and couriered (chilled) to the Onderstepoort state vet for a number of tests.
You will have to pay for the local Philippines vet to do the blood, the fedexing and facilitation. I was charged 16000php.

You need a vet to do this. Allan at Vets in Practice, Alabang has done this twice now and has been very helpful.

The SA state vet will create a second Vet import permit that also needs to accompany the dogs.
In order to get this permit you need to deposit about Rand1500 per pet in a South African bank and the deposit slip needs to accompany the OVI Master Permit application with the blood to Onderstepoort.

When the dogs finally are in quarantine in Johannesburg they will be re-tested for some 5 items - which you will pay for - about Rand 1400 each.

Cats need a separate application for a non-quarantine import.
They do not go into quarantine.

They dogs need to be picked up from quarantine once the state quarantine staff are happy with them. South Africa quarantine Kennel costs are about Rand 32 per day (as apposed to AUD149 per day in Sydney (Rand1500)) Really Australia!?. You are going to crash with your prices!

Private Kenneling ranges from about 80 to 120 per day per animal.

So now your dogs are in South Africa.

So once they are in South Africa and out of quarantine, a 6 months Rabies regime starts, along with all the other normal Vaccinations, kenneling and flights and import permits to South Africa.

In Johannesburg I found three main kennels which people talk about on the forums

Keringa kennels - offer the full suite - kenneling and vet and import and export.
Paws Resort - kenneling and vet - they use another company for import and export.
Animal Travel do the whole gambit as well.

Keringa are the most expensive. they also omitted where the animal would stay - as they have three classes of kennels.

Paws resort seem reasonable with kennels with gardens. they were helpful and seemed to be less of a money grab.

I will follow up with more detail once I am further in process.

Feel free to post comments below and ask me questions in the comments.



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