Pet Prep

Passport to Adventure

One of the questions most frequently asked of me (after “Why Vienna?”) was:  “What are you going to do with Scout?”

My response was an automatic, “Are you kidding? She’s coming with me, of course!”

Then it was, “Does she have to be quarantined?” And the answer was, "No."

Scout's documents are inside
her personal pet passport folder

But there are some particular hoops that we both have to jump through in order to satisfy the authorities that she is worthy of being admitted into Austria. It has to do primarily with the level of a country’s control of rabies, and since Austria and the U.S. are on the same ‘tier’ as established by international treaty, all we needed, mostly, was vaccination certification.

In addition, however, it seems that it is also now international law that all domestic animals must have an electronic ID chip inserted under their skin in order to help the authorities locate lost pets and reunite them with their rightful owners. Scout had had one put in by the shelter from which I adopted her, but it does not operate on the same frequency as those in Europe, so we had to get her another one, and now she is the dog with two chips on her shoulder! (Might explain some of her behavior, heh heh!)

The next, and penultimate, step was to get all the paperwork certified by the USDA, and for that I had to drive up to the state headquarters in Maine’s capital, Augusta.

Actually, more like the rural outskirts of Augusta, and not quite as august as the name might imply. After forty-five minutes on the turnpike, I exited and drove along country roads where I found what you might call an eclectic series of enterprises – everything from auto and tractor repair shops to antique barns to fundamentalist churches to a lace and leather lingerie boutique (yes, practically across the road!) and a smelt farm – each spaced far enough apart to drive a herd of cattle through.

In fact, images of cows were everywhere inside the USDA building, where the chief state veterinarian, who would be charged with certifying Scout’s paperwork, was also processing a shipment of thousands of beef and dairy livestock to, of all places, Turkey. Good to know where your government tax dollars are going, eh?

And what, I hear you ask, is the final step? A few days before I fly to Vienna, I must return to the veterinarian who vaccinated and chipped Scout for a final checkup and document certifying that she is healthy and fit to travel.

Well, now that I think of it, there is one more final step: getting Scout into her travel crate. I’ve already begun trying to acclimate her to her temporary 'home in the sky', but I’m hoping that a calming dose of (vet-recommended) Benadryl will go a long way towards accomplishing this task. Once that’s done, I’ll take a calming dose of something too!

Scout gets cozy in her crate before the hood goes on