Travelling to Europe With Dogs After Brexit: Pet Passports vs Animal Health Certificates

Travelling with Dogs: From Pet Passports to Animal Health Certificates

The United Kingdom used to be part of the Pet Passport scheme until Brexit, and then we had to move to an Animal Health Certificate (AHC).

Travelling with dogs pre-Brexit was simple! The dog would have a passport, rabies could be given by a UK vet, and as long as this was kept up to date and the dog had their tapeworm tablet to come home, it was easy and possible to be spontaneous about travelling.

These days, an AHC needs to be done 1–10 days before travel. It’s not an awful process and is simple enough, however, it does need to be organised beforehand, which adds a little extra planning to holidays and trips abroad. Most importantly though, it adds quite a lot of cost, so if you’re travelling frequently, it soon mounts up. I pay about £120 for an AHC for two dogs, but have previously paid £165 for a single dog.

Now, I will preface this by saying that the UK is supposed to be rejoining the Pet Passport scheme and, all being well, we’ll pick up where we left off pre-Brexit. However, the details are still limited and timelines haven’t been announced. This article is based on how it currently stands, but this may be subject to change.

If you’re planning a single, one-off trip to Europe, there’s no need to worry about getting a passport, the AHC may be your simpler option. However, if you’re intending to travel more frequently, a passport is well worth considering.

We’ve travelled a few times now on AHCs, so as we were in Europe for longer and had more time to plan extra bits, I decided we would stop off in Belgium on the way home to sort out their passports.

The dogs still required an AHC to get out of the UK and into France, so we went through the normal process. We sorted this as usual and had our holiday. On our return journey, we combined the tapeworm tablets with the passport appointment, as the tapeworm needs to be done at the vets anyway.

After we left the EU, a lot of people headed over to the continent to get their pets a passport. However, many countries started preventing people from getting them without an EU address. Some countries do still allow it though and Belgium is one of the popular choices.

Many people suggest that vets in Luxembourg, Spain and Belgium are the most willing. Northern Ireland is still part of the scheme, so you can get one done there, or in the Republic of Ireland too. This isn’t to say that vets in other countries won’t issue one, but it appears harder to get them, so I opted to go to a vet who is well-versed in issuing them for UK residents, rather than risk being turned away at the border.

I went to Dierenarts Lieve De Rycke, just outside Bruges. I emailed her a week or so into our trip to see if she had availability to fit us in. At this point, I wasn’t 100% decided, as it would mean a slightly different route home, but she had space to get us in, so we visited her the day before we returned home (just over 24 hours before to fit within the tapeworm timeline).

She speaks excellent English and booking was quick and easy.

On the day, we turned up for our appointment and she needed our AHC documentation and ideally a microchip implant date too (I believe if unknown, they put down the date your pup turned eight weeks old).

She filled out the passport with my details and the dogs’ too and ensured everything was copied over correctly. She then added in their UK rabies jab, as well as the new jab they received during our appointment. They don’t use live vaccines, so the risk is low even if your dog has recently been vaccinated. Raven only had hers about three months before, as she’s new to us, but had no ill effects from having a second one.

After that, they had their tapeworm tablet, and this was recorded in the passport to ensure they could get back over. She also filled it in on the AHC too, so we could choose to use whichever document we wanted to get home.

I opted to use the passport to get home as I was eager to put it to the test. We had no issues whatsoever and sailed through just as we always do.

Potentially, I could’ve got away with not getting a passport on this trip because, of course, the UK is due to rejoin the scheme. However, it was worth doing while we were already there, and we had a lovely trip into Bruges afterwards to explore the city.

The passport will now allow us to travel at short notice should we wish, without having to organise the AHC and take the time out to sort that.

For us, it’s well worth it because we intend to travel more frequently in the future. However, if we were travelling very infrequently, I would most likely not get a passport.

Our new passports have 18 spaces for tapeworm tablet documentation. This essentially means we can use the passport 18 times before it will need replacing.

As the current rules stand, you will need to have rabies booster jabs given by an EU vet. Having them done by a vet in England, Scotland or Wales would invalidate the passport, so this is another thing to consider when getting one done. You can get them done in Northern or Southern Ireland, or in mainland Europe, but of course it comes with less convenience than simply popping to your local vet.

👉 Dierenarts Lieve De Rycke on Google Maps