Question
We are in the process of obtaining our residency Visa curious to know if you have pets (dogs specifically) how one can bring pets to Spain?
Also, what health insurance company did you purchase? We are ages 60 and 65 looking for the best health policy for our age.
Answers
These are the answers of some Facebook group members:
“My husband and I moved to Spain in September 2021 with our 3 cats. We used Lufthansa airlines who are known for being great with transporting pets.”
“We flew over with our two big dogs. We opted to ship ourselves instead of using a transport company. The biggest hassle was the microchip. Have your vet put the number on your rabies certificate so it shows they had it implanted prior to the shot. Even the USDA vet had trouble locating it( it was on the rabies certificate!). But other than that, triple check all paperwork. I had to push the people at cargo to get the paperwork done timely. Our dogs did fine. Were lying quietly when we went to get them. I spoke almost no Spanish, nor did the cargo people in Madrid. We were not new to shipping dogs,but many recent changes plus COVID-19 made for additional work getting the paperwork done. And we went for a non stop. Lots of great info online. Lots of paperwork too. Get Spanish copies if you can.”
“We used Air Animal, a professional company, for our four 50+ pound dogs. That company used Lufthansa as the carrier.
Our move was complicated. We lived on a ranch an hour south of Austin, Texas. Our four 50+ pound dogs had to be boarded for 4 days before transport because they could not arrive in Spain until we had closed on our house in Spain, but we had to vacate our ranch and fly on ahead.
We used Air Animal and they were great. They’d arranged for one of their reps to pick up the dogs and drive them back to Houston (2.5 hour drive). But 3 days before that was to happen, the hurricane hit, and the Houston airport was underwater.
The company scrambled and arranged for another rep to drive from Dallas (5 hours) and take the dogs there. They also had to reschedule flights — leaving from Dallas instead of Houston. On the scheduled day, the rep delivered the dogs to the airport, where they were flown to Frankfurt. They were overnighted at that airport’s world-class animal lounge, to give the dogs a break from their kennels.
The next day, they were flown to Madrid, where Air Animal’s Spain rep met them and handled all of the customs inspection and paperwork. Finally the dogs were loaded into two vans (two large kennels per van) and driven 4 hours to our home in the mountains an hour south of Valencia.
All dogs arrived understandably traumatized but healthy and well cared for. In fact, one dog had a stinky accident and the Frankfurt guys bathed him and cleaned out his kennel.
We paid $2500/dog for all of this service, but it was worth every penny.
“For the pets Relomar www.relomar.com”
“We flew to Madrid airport with our dogs two weeks ago. We have two XL dogs (long haired Weimaraner and yellow Lab) that flew in Cargo. We found a vet that handled International travel for pets. We arrived at the airport 4 hours prior to the flight, picked them up after their notification and drove them home to Denia.”
Useful links:
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- Get quotes for the best Health insurances to apply for a NLV
