At the Vet - and Deciding whether to move your pet

I'll start by recounting how it all actually went down, then recommend how it could have been done better. This adventure started out as a series of "just in case" actions, in case we wanted to move the dogs to Hawaii. A couple of years ago, I was at the vet and they were having a sale on microchipping. I think there is a national "microchip month" where all vets have a special. Since that is a prerequisite to importing pets to Hawaii, I went ahead and had it done. If they never moved, at least if they got lost they would have microchips in them. A microchip is like a grain of rice, very small and implanted in the back. Painless and easy. It was about $30 per dog.

We visited Hawaii without our dogs, and the petsitting bills were getting really high. With each visit we missed them more and wanted them to be with us. We never considered having them here at first, since they are double-coated and suited to cold weather. We really paid attention to the temperature and came for the month of August to see just how hot it would get, and it turns out it's cooler here in the heat of summer than in many places on the mainland, and cooler than where we were living.

• Decide if your moving destination is right for your pet. If possible, visit beforehand and imagine your pet living there. Is the temperature too warm? Are there breezes? Will you need air conditioning? Can you afford to run air conditioning if you need it?
• Go to http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/ai/aqs/aqs-checklist-5.pdf and print out the checklist of requirements. I will go over these requirements in detail with examples of how I did it, if it would be helpful.
• You can also get the dog and cat import form at http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/ai/aqs/AQS-278.pdf You won't need this until you get closer to the move date and you have the tests completed and all the paperwork together.
• You might want to print out the form at this link http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/ai/aqs/AQS-39.pdf and bring it to your vet. Our vet didn't know anything about the Hawaii requirements and I had to walk them through it, and look over their shoulder every step of the way, and correct the health certificate when they filled it out.
• Make sure their rabies vaccinations are up to date, even if you aren't planning to move for a long time, and KEEP THE ORIGINAL SIGNED RABIES CERTIFICATE IN YOUR FILES! Go to your filing cabinet now and check your pet's last rabies certificate and make sure you have the signed originals. When I looked for ours, the vet hadn't signed them, and she had left the clinic and moved away, they were mangled from having the rabies tags taped to them, and I had to bring them to the vet and have them re-signed. This has to do with the separate requirement regarding the rabies vaccinations themselves ("Step 1" on the checklist), not the OIE-FAVN Rabies Blood Test ("Step 3" on the checklist), hereinafter referred to as the "rabies blood titer" or "rabies titer."
• Go ahead and have your pet microchipped right away ("Step 2" on the checklist), since it's a good thing to have whether you move or not. You need to have a microchip number for your pet in order to do the required rabies blood test.
  

During this whole time we weren't even sure if living in Hawaii would be right for ourselves, dogs or not. Some of my reading included the books entitled, "So you want to live in Hawaii" and the "Hawaii Pet Book." But that decision process is a whole different topic!


Fast forward to the point where we have made up our minds that we want to be in Hawaii and that we want our dogs with us. We had the dogs' rabies titers drawn (the required OIE-FAVN rabies blood test). This is a blood sample taken to see if the pet has sufficient levels of rabies vaccine in their blood.



If you are pretty sure now that your pet is moving, then you might as well have the rabies titer done at the same time as the microchip. This is more expensive ($90 per dog in our case) but the results are good for 3 years, or 36 months, so you have plenty of time to make up your mind after it's done.

• Make sure your vet puts down Hawaii as the destination when sending in the blood sample! This ensures that the results are sent directly to the Hawaii Dept. of Agriculture so they can put your pet's microchip number into their records.
  
• Reason to have it done early: In addition to the 120 day waiting period, your pet might fail the test, regardless of the fact that they are rabies free. It is the level of vaccine they are testing for, not the presence or absence of rabies. One of our dogs failed the test and this delayed our move for several months (because this particular dog needed surgery in between so we didn't want to inject him with more vaccine and draw blood in the midst of all the surgery related stuff). In a normal case, if your pet fails, you will have your pet re-vaccinated, wait 3 weeks (vet's recommendation) and re-draw the titer.
• NOTE: If you have to re-vaccinate, it needs to be more than 90 days after the previous vaccination, if you are going to use this vaccination as one of the "two most recent" vaccines administered and sent in. Don't be confused, this is a whole separate requirement from the blood titer. It just happened to be, when we had the first titer done on the dog that failed, that his last rabies vaccination had been done over 6 months before, so that the time that passed between the two vaccinations was over the required 90 days. On the other dog, her first vaccine was in 2004, the next in 2007, her titer was taken in 2008 and she passed, and she won't be vaccinated again until 2010 (3 year rabies vaccine).


• After the blood test is done, you can go to the DOA website and look up your pet's microchip number. You open this file http://hawaii.gov/hdoa/ai/aqs/aqs-microchip.pdf and use "find" to find your pet's microchip. It's exciting you see your pet on the list! That will show they received the results and tell you the exact eligibility date from which you can book your travel! The waiting period begins the day (or the day after) the blood sample is received at the University of Kansas laboratory - but to make sure, the Hawaii Dept of Agriculture website's PDF document will list the exact eligibility date, which was actually earlier than the date our vet calculated. To be safe I booked the flight about 4 days after the eligibility date (though you have 3 years to do it after a successful test result).



• Frontline and Interceptor - Get your pets tested for heartworm and get them on heartworm and tick/parasite treatments. Hawaii requires fipronil (ingredient in Frontline) treatment done and noted on the health certificate within 14 days of arrival. Heartworm protection is a must in the tropics. I didn't do this with the microchips/rabies tests, I waited until about a month before we came. Otherwise the vet bill can be huge. Money saving tip - if your vet allows it, buy Frontline online and bring it to the vet on the day the health certificate is being done, they only have to certify your pet's been treated, so I didn't feel like paying them to sell me the treatment too.

In retrospect, we wish we would have come sooner, but we couldn't because of the waiting period, one dog became eligible in April but the other had failed and had the surgery, then it was summer and too hot to fly - so get the blood titer done right away! You don't want to have to leave your pet behind or put it in quarantine, or have to endure waiting any longer than you have to.

These pictures don't belong in this post, I'm not to the "flying" step yet, but they are pretty cool. You can see our white dog (Tasha) coming out of the cargo hold from the first flight, she's standing up, looking alert. At the bottom of the conveyor there were five people very carefully paying attention to and handling the crates to the baggage cart, I have a pic of that below. We also did some airline personnel bribing - more on that later.

We wanted to claim and walk the dogs at the layover so they knew we would be there at the other end before getting on the long flight across the ocean. It took some jumping through hoops but I will explain in my post about the flight booking process.

This picture is of our brown dog (Danzig) getting to the bottom of the conveyor - notice the baggage handler greeting him face to face.


And notice there are five people surrounding the crate, it's not being bounced around or tipped on its side, they seem to really care!

Aloha and good night for now!