A friend suggested that I keep a good diary over the next couple of years. I thought that was a great idea! But thinking it and making it happen are two very different things. We are a week into our adventure and I forgot to bring along a book to write in. Instead I thought I’d do a little catch up on the computer and download it to my blog later.
About a year ago Greg found out what his next work assignment would be. That was SO very strange. We’ve never known a whole year in advance what was coming next. It was so hard to believe that I’ve kept pretty low key about mentioning it. It just didn’t seem real. Word was, we were moving to England, North Yorkshire to be exact. Hard to believe, but now, here we are.
I’m going to back up a week and try to recall and share with you our experiences with our arrival. After that, I’ll try to be a better blogger as we explore a whole new place.
Maybe I’ll start first with a little background on moving with dogs to England. In the past there has been a six month quarantine on animals going into the UK. When I began reading up on what we needed to do to get our pups ready, the process seemed so simple. The quarantine had been done away with as long as the dogs met certain requirements. Those requirements were simple, it shouldn’t be a big deal traveling with them. However, the reality wasn’t that simple.
As long as the dogs had microchips, which they both got as puppies, and their rabies vaccines were recorded on the microchips, they would just need a worm treatment 1 – 5 days before arriving in the UK and all of that recorded on a health certificate. That sounds easy enough. At the last minute I found out that the USDA required their health certificate be started 10 days in advance. According to my vet they would reject the form several times before approval. But it couldn’t be finalized until the 1 – 5 day window after the worm treatment. Since it was one day of travel to the UK, that tightened the window to 4 days. Since we were flying on a Thursday it was tightened even more because of the vet’s hours. We got it done, but only had the certificate back from the USDA the morning we were flying out. It was a nail-biter.
Next trick was to book the dogs on the flight. I assumed we would book them along with our tickets, but no. The dogs could not be booked until two weeks before the flight. Then we wouldn’t have final approval until we completed some airline and customs forms. Twice we were asked for a C5 form to be faxed to James Cargo in London. We never received confirmation that either form actually reached them.
Then there were the crates. Both dogs had crates from past flights. As I looked at the specifics for the crates I realized that MacGyver’s crate didn’t have ventilation in the back and would not be approved. After measuring River we became concerned that the crate she had flown in on United just two years earlier might be too small for today’s standards. We bought two new extra large dogs crates.
We finally arrived at the airport Friday afternoon (four hours before our flight) with USDA stamped forms in hand along with two extra large crates and two medium sized dogs. And they guy at the British Airways Cargo terminal in Denver says the crates are too small. Unbelievable. Instead he gives us two left over crates from the warehouse, homemade wooden crates that barely look like they are staying together. They were smaller in all dimensions than our new crates except in length. He says ours aren’t long enough. He was very nice about it. And Caleb and Lydia were able to pick up our new crates and hopefully return them to Petco. We left our sweet pups with the BA Cargo folks with frozen bowls of water and a couple toys and a promise to see them soon. MacGyver was sad. River was mad.
And we headed to the terminal. The flight left at 8:45PM. I was hoping to sleep through the night. I’d heard good things about BA and was expecting a comfortable flight. I felt like a sardine, cramped up in a center seat. I will admit though the flight personnel were incredibly nice. And way more food than I ever needed that late at night. We arrived right on time in London at 12:30PM on Friday.
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