fayrehurst

can anyone help us. we are coming over in feb 2005. starting work 28th feb for kindersley transport. we have a small dog and need advice from anyone who has taken there pets with them. which airline did you use? how much did it cost?

all advice gratefully received

Fogmyst

Hi Fayrehurst,

We used Air Canada for our two dogs, and here is a link to the section that should help you

http://www.aircanada.ca/services/luggage/pets.html

and below for the container requirements.

http://www.airpets.com/index.html

One thing to look out for though is some airlines will not let pets travel, when the airport they are going to falls below a certain temperature, especially in the real cold Winter.

You will also need an export form from Defra, your pet micro chipped and we also got our Dog vaccinated against Rabies, and then they will do a blood test to verify the vaccination is successful. This was done by our Vet, this all has to be timed close to your time of departure, because the Defra Export license is only valid for a certain amount of time If I remember rightly.
Your Vet should be able verify the exact requirements.

Your lucky going to Saskatoon, its a nice place. Thats where we would like to end up, we will be in Regina this Xmas.

Smokey

I think thatthe big aircraft have somewhat heated stowage but if its not then you'll have real problems getting to travel in feb. We used Airpets for our two dogs as it seemed that there would be loads of stress when we got there so paying someone else to do the biz seemed sensible. Turned out it wasn't stressful at all. There was only one other immigrating family on our flight and when Customs found out we were flying with dogs (not carrying meat!) they couldn't get us processed quick enough. Apparantly the dog pound at Calgary Airport is right over the other side of the airport. I don;t think the problem will be the long haul carrier (we flew Air Canada) but on the second leg to Saskatoon where I believe the cargo holds are not heated in any way. Bear in mind, we had temps down to minus 40 last winter :scared:

If you need a short term (or long term in our case) kennel these folks were great http://www.sunshadows.com/boarding.htm and only a very short drive from the centre of town. Although when we spoke to people, they didn;t seem to have a very good rep, in fact we had no problems and they were very kind to the dogs. At one point we nearly changed kennels to some on the Sutherland Industrial area but when we visited they had small cages (not standard kennels) and the dogs who barked were covered by blankets and there was no way you'd be able to leave them there if no rabies vac.

Hope it helps a bit....shout if there's anything else

HaMa

you might want to look at this thread that was discussing similar topic earlier on,

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=259129


HaMa

Purley

I probably said this on that other thread - I have some friends who brought two dogs from England to Regina in February. They came from Calgary to Regina by Westjet and said they were very helpful. Westjet have a heated hold where they keep dogs. I think they said they have a limit of two dogs per flight. They have no temperature restrictions - that is they will take dogs when the weather is at any temperature because of the heated space where they keep them on the plane. They will not carry animals during the Christmas rush between December 16 and Jan 5 inclusive. All they said was that the dogs would have to be on the tarmac for 5-10 minutes while being loaded and so you should maybe not ship dogs if the temperature is going to be 35 below!!

The guy from Westjet said to me that they do their best to look after animals. He said it would not be good public relations if they killed people's pet while on a flight!!