Travelling with your pet outside Europe

If you are travelling with your pet to a non EU country you will need to apply for an Export Health Certificate (EHC) that confirms that your pet meets the health requirements of the destination country. You will also need an EHC if you are moving to or travelling in Europe for more than 6 months. 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-an-export-health-certificate 

Owners should make sure that one of our OV’s (official veterinarian) will be available to certify their pet and then apply for the EHC online. 

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/get-an-export-health-certificate#how-to-apply-for-an-ehc  

Make these enquiries well in advance of travel, as some countries require additional vaccinations, blood tests and waiting periods of several months before you can travel. 

It is the owner’s responsibility to ensure their pet meets the requirements of the destination country – this may include blood tests, checks at specific time and parasite treatments. Requirements vary with both species travelling and destination country. Our OV’s can assist with this but we strongly recommend the use of dedicated pet transport services such as PetAir that can help you with the whole process including ensuring tests and checks are done at the correct time to meet requirements for different destinations. We have worked with transport companies on numerous occasions, and they certainly help to guide owners through want can be a high stakes complicated process very well. 

For pets travelling to Australia, we have OV66 certified vets who perform official identification and certification checks which are part of a strict process which can reduce quarantine times from 30 to 10 days.   

Please see Travel to Australia OV66 information

Updated July 2026