(I have been remiss in keeping up with my intended blogs. Suffice it to say, we have arrived in Belgium and after having spent about three weeks in a furnished apartment while awaiting the arrival of our F&E (militarism for furniture and effects), we are established in our new home. I will write more about that later, butt wanted to start my blogs by relating our dog’s first experience in Belgium.
First let me say, I had done my homework. Importing a family pet into Belgium is a relatively simple procedure. The country itself requires an up-to-date (less than a year) rabies vaccine and an International Health Certificate, available from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. This was one of my biggest worries about the whole move thing. What would happen IF they did approve my dog? So I researched and I’ve got to tell you, there is a lot of misinformation out there. But I went with CFIA, figuring they are the experts.
We departed Montreal on Saturday, 23 July. It was an over-night (hiccup #1), direct flight to Brussels. This pre-empted any issue there might have been with landing in another country. If we had, we would have had to meet their animal import requirements as well.
We arrived in Brussels at about 830 a.m on Sunday and because Rhea was flown cargo, as opposed to baggage (our girl is about 20 lbs too heavy for that), we had to make our way to the cargo side of the airport. That in itself was an adventure, but we finally made it to the Worldwide Flight Services hangar which handles freight for Air Canada. A very nice ENGLISH speaking young man confirmed that Rhea had arrived and was in their hangar, we just had a few documents to complete with customs. No problem, right? Wrong!! We were sent to the first of two Customs offices. There we encountered two non-English speaking women who talked amongst themselves and kept pointing to our documents. They sent us to another Customs office where the same thing happened and we were sent back to the WFS hangar. Did I mention it was an overnight flight? It was now Sunday. Hiccup # 1. The departure date on our boarding pass did not agree with the arrival date in Brussels. Of course not, I was an overnight flight. We would need a veterinarian certificate. The aforementioned WFS clerk said he could handle that with a phone call, which he did. The other issue was that the invoice that we had did not indicate any payment for the Customs officer. Hiccup #2. After all, it was Sunday. So now we needed another invoice that indicated we had paid the required fee for the Customs. That done, we were sent back to the second Customs office, with a warning from the WFS clerk, “Remember, he has all the power.” This required a woman’s touch. At this point, we had been there 2 hours and it would be another hour of waiting in line before the Customs agent would stamp (music to my ears) my paperwork. Now it was back to WFS, paper in hand, to collect our dog. And there she was, huddled in her kennel, taking the last of her forklift rides. She was one happy puppy and I was one happy mommy. She never met the Customs agent, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have liked him.
