Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Hmm, yeah that was the thought, or soft-land in Calgary buy a car there and move it to New York to wait for us. We'll have a think around other options here, we were hoping to avoid the cost and headache of car hire...

Originally Posted by Stumpylegs

We looked into it - not from NY but from NS, for May/June this year - the move didn't happen due to COVID amongst other things.

In the end it got mighty expensive mighty quickly. My google sheets on the matter suggested for 35 days (10 on ship and 25 on land) averaging 200km a day (which seemed sensible with wanting to see the country, and have a couple of rest days here and there, understanding we'd be stopping every couple of hours to let dogs have water and bathroom - would want time for a shower/evening meal/dog walk etc and its not like we could just check into Motel at 10pm and fall asleep) costed up as below.

Cruise cost £4600
Pet transport £1900 (2 dogs, 1 in large kennel, 1 in small)
Car hire £2800 (one way, largish SUV, being dropped Cranbrook,BC, Calgary was a little bit cheaper according to notes).
Fuel £500
Airbnb + Motel costs for 25 nights - £2800 (this was scoped out on airbnb +booking.com and came to £2572 - but without concrete dates would vary, so added an extra £10 per night just in case)
Food costs on Journey - highly variable depending on cooking facilities and taste but we budgeted £25 p/p per day including road trip snacks £1250

Suddenly we were looking at £15,000ish - couldn't really take much more stuff than flying (as it had to fit in a car we were losing the boot space on, and needed to pack for a cruise too! as well as needing to take dog beds, bowls, food etc in the car) and had the possible stresses on the dogs being at sea for 10 days.

Compared to flights for £400 and then circa £200 per dog, meant the 4 of us (2 humans + 2 dogs) could get across in a day for £1200ish.

Realise you could batter the numbers down quite considerably if you wanted to go 4 up in hyundai i40 and drive 1000km a day, and all my figures were rounded up for both cases

It would have been a really nice way to start our new lives - but balancing risk/cost it didn't seem viable for us. Other options but they didn't seem to save too much included renting a campervan from cruisecanada, or upon soft landing and sorting somewhere to live for our first few months, buying a car - doing 5000km across the country and parking car up in NS before flying home to pick up other half and dogs.

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Thank you so much for this breakdown, as we are just at the point of weighing up our options. Flying isn't a deal breaker, but I would really worry about the dogs- I'd like to consider everything else reasonable to put their welfare first. That difference in cost isn't really justifiable, but I didn't think it would be this much, I was happy with a few thousand £s more for the dogs sake! I'm curious about your google sheets breakdown, is this something you made, or is there a template available I could find? We were only guessing/planning on a week road travel, as we weren't thinking of a huge holiday, more a scenic detour. We've got a lot more thinking to do weighing up cost/time/stress etc. but thanks for all of the info! Just out of interest, what are your dogs?

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Thank you so much for this breakdown, as we are just at the point of weighing up our options. Flying isn't a deal breaker, but I would really worry about the dogs- I'd like to consider everything else reasonable to put their welfare first. That difference in cost isn't really justifiable, but I didn't think it would be this much, I was happy with a few thousand £s more for the dogs sake! I'm curious about your google sheets breakdown, is this something you made, or is there a template available I could find? We were only guessing/planning on a week road travel, as we weren't thinking of a huge holiday, more a scenic detour. We've got a lot more thinking to do weighing up cost/time/stress etc. but thanks for all of the info! Just out of interest, what are your dogs?

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Just out of interest, what are your dogs?

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

We are planning on moving from Staffordshire to Calgary appx. 2022/2023. We currently have a 20 m/o Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, and are on the wait list for a second next year, so we will be looking to travel over with the dogs. Both of us would feel much more comfortable taking the boat travel route as the breed are notoriously emotionally sensitive and we don't want to cause any unnecessary distress, and then it gives us a fantastic opportunity for a cross country road trip once we arrive, something we already love doing for holidays.

Does anyone have any personal experience of the Queen Mary 2 for travel and dog transport, either to New York or Halifax, and the road trips thereafter?
Or any discussion of the dog export process?

Originally Posted by Stumpylegs

No template, for a lot of this planned move i set myself up a spreadsheet to budget for everything (and i mean everything!) I just started some tabs as different options. My point would be to start with a blank sheet of paper/spreadsheet and write down logically every step you would need to take for each option, then work out a cost for each step.

You might be able to get it down significantly (not sure how cheap cruises are with the current climate) but for 2 of us and 2 dogs, we were looking £6500 for what I think was a mid may crossing to get off in NS with an outside (non balcony) cabin - we couldn't get away from that. which already put us way over the cost of buying 2 IATA approved crates on facebook, a quick trip to the vets, and chucking them in the hold with us.

If you're willing to average 500km a day, no rest days you might shave £1500 off accommodation and £750 off food, and who knows on car hire - in exchange for a less enjoyable more stressful trip. But for us we couldn't see a reasonable way to get it below £10,000.

Originally Posted by Phaedru5

I flew London to Vancouver with my labrador. Sure i was worried about him but he was in a crate that he was used to for about 11hrs all in - out of his entire life. Im sure he forgot about it moments after he got out since dogs cant judge time anyway. And he was happy to go back into his crate afterwards so it cant have been too traumatic. For the ease and simplicity of just flying in and arriving it was worth it. I would reconsider flying if I were you. Dogs dont know they are on an aerplane afterall, they dont even know what they are, probably just think they are in the back of a car and then I imagine he slept most of the way. I am anxious on flights too but I know that Im 40,000ft in the air, my dog didnt.

Originally Posted by bats

10 days in kennels on a ship compared to 10 hours on a plane, plus the airport bit at each end?

Originally Posted by Siouxie

This post (and thread) might be of use! Transporting Our Dog to Calgary (From London Heathrow/Gatwick)
and this thread Relocating dogs through America to Canada from UK

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Ah, it won't let me open those thread!

Originally Posted by Siouxie

This post (and thread) might be of use! Transporting Our Dog to Calgary (From London Heathrow/Gatwick)
and this thread Relocating dogs through America to Canada from UK

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

Ah, it won't let me open those thread!

Originally Posted by jordanleanne

That's a job for the husband then, he makes a hobby about of organization spreadsheets we'll give a go of running through different options this way, but stress (for people and dogs) is a big deciding factor, which we will have to weigh up with cost. How did you find your dogs after the move, did they settle well, and how do they find the change in lifestyle? Thanks for all of your advice!

Originally Posted by Jerseygirl

Many of our members have transported their dogs by air...some from Australia. Out of the hundreds of people that have done so...we have only had a couple that haven’t ended well. Odds are that your dogs will be perfectly fine...but I understand your concerns.

One thing to consider is that many airlines will not transport animals during the cold winter months.

Originally Posted by Siouxie

How very strange - there is no forum reason that you wouldn't be able to, what error message do you get? Reposting direct links in the hope that you can now access
Relocating dogs through America to Canada from UK
Transporting Our Dog to Calgary (From London Heathrow/Gatwick)

Originally Posted by Stumpylegs

We didn't make the move, was planned for May/June this year - but COVID hit, My PR application hasn't come through, I couldn't accompany the other half on her temporary work permit due to travel restrictions, we kept waiting over the summer hoping my PR was going to come through and travel exemptions were to be lifted but it didn't happen.

Honestly spreadsheeting everything, partially kept me sane but also made me realise how quick a moving budget goes out the window - and that moving everything, 6 months rental in a pet friendly place, an SUV, insurance, basic living expenses, new cell phone contract etc cost triple what I'd originally thought.

Your £25 a month car insurance, £15 sim only phone contract, £2500 hatchback you can get over here - gets you nowhere over there.

Originally Posted by Jsmth321

This is for US airlines, Canada makes the data harder to find if not impossible, and US DOT just provides a lot more data on airlines.

This is for 2018 most recent I found with full year stats but gives a bit of an idea.

American transported 61,040 pets with 2 incidents

Hawaiian Airlines 3 animal deaths, with 9,505 animals being transported

United experienced 2 deaths and 1 injury during transport of 44,432 animals

SkyWest transported 32,515 animals with 1 injury and 0 deaths (Skywest operates flights under other airlines banners such as American Eagle, Delta Connection, United Express,and s

Alaska Airlines transported 143,634 with 1 injury and 0 deaths.


Now they don't break down cause of death or injury, so doesn't necessarily mean the airline was negligent.