Documents You Need to Travel With Your Pet

If you like to travel and take your pet with you, here is some useful information regarding the necessary documentation.

To go with a dog to Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, it is enough that the dog is vaccinated against rabies, chipped, vaccinated against infectious diseases, has a passport, and has a health certificate issued by a veterinary clinic, not older than 48 hours.

 If you are from Serbia and decide to spend your vacation in one of the EU countries, the documentation for traveling with pets consists of a passport containing a microchip number and vaccination data, a rabies certificate, as well a veterinarian’s health certificate, and a veterinary inspection certificate. You get all the documents in Serbia.

You get your pet’s passport from the veterinarian after the first rabies vaccination. Vaccination against rabies is carried out from the third month of age after the puppy receives other necessary vaccines. Then your pet gets a passport and a microchip (legally required type of marking and a condition for the EU entrance) and it must include your and your dog’s data, a chip number, the date of rabies vaccination, and data on other vaccinations and treatments, etc.

Important: to obtain a veterinary inspection certificate, the veterinarian enters and stamps, in the pet’s passport, information on the dates and types of protection the dog received against ticks and tapeworms (eg Nexgard and Drontal).

Rabies antibody titers examination should be done at least three months before the trip! 

The dog must be vaccinated against rabies. The antibody titer to rabies is determined from the blood, optimally one month after vaccination, because it shows the highest value in that period, and over time it begins to decline, so it may happen that only seven months later it is below the allowed level for traveling abroad.

On the other hand, it takes two weeks for the dog’s organism to react to the vaccine. The veterinarian will send a blood sample for analysis, to determine the titer of rabies antibodies at the Pasteur Institute in Novi Sad.

If all goes well, a certificate from the Pasteur Institute is mailed to the owner. The dog can travel three months from the date of sample analysis.

The titer analysis is done only once in a lifetime, but the dog must be regularly vaccinated against rabies once a year, which is recorded in the passport.

The total cost of obtaining a titer certificate is around 7,000 dinars, and, depending on the place of sampling, the costs of sampling, storage, and shipping should be added. 

The certificate for leaving the country is obtained from the veterinary inspection. 48 ​​hours before the trip, the owner with the rabies certificate goes to the veterinary inspection of his district to get a veterinary certificate necessary to go abroad.

It is necessary to attach:

– Proof of rabies vaccination – passport

 – Rabies certificate

– Certificate of animal health – issued by your veterinarian no later than 48 hours before the trip and it costs about 1200 dinars. So, first, go to the vet to get a certificate of health of the dog, then to the veterinary inspection, where you will get the certificate for leaving the country on the spot, which costs about 4,200 dinars.

The certificate is issued for each country individually and is valid for 120 days from the date of issue.

Important: you can travel with pets only through border crossings where there is a veterinary inspection, the list is here.

According to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), when it comes to rabies, countries are divided into three groups- those that are at high risk, countries where rabies is controlled, and countries where rabies does not exist. The conditions of entry are defined based on the country to which you are traveling concerning the country from which you are traveling.

Traveling with pets from one EU country to another is somewhat simplified, but even in that case, if e.g. you are traveling from Croatia, the dog should have a passport, a microchip number, be vaccinated against rabies, and be treated against tapeworms.

Although the EU has a specific list of rules that are considered the standard for travel, there are countries such as the UK, Ireland, and Sweden, and Australia, outside Europe, New Zealand, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates that have their own classifications. A long quarantine period if you enter from countries that are considered high-risk areas makes traveling with pets difficult. 

If you need additional information regarding documentation for other countries, you can contact us at info@pettraveladvisor.com

Author: Marina Stancevic