I just may do that and see what I start - though I plan to keep a few for the dog who never failed to get excited when I came home late at night in KC with a new tennis ball and threw it into the living room to the dog who was standing in a pile of dozens of balls.

I plan to do a full detailed post on the procedure much later but no, no quarantine.

Within Europe there is the Pet Passport scheme introduced to replace quarantine, and the US is one of several countries that although not within the scheme do co-operate with it.

In short you can move a pet if you go through a load of hoops that are certified by vets and labs first. Roughly it’s a form of self-administered quarantine I suppose.

So I had to get a European standard chip (neither of the 2 main American standards are accepted in Europe) into the dog. And then using the chip to identify the dog shots for rabies and other stuff are given. Then after a period of weeks has passed you get a blood test - of which there are different standards - and the lab establishes if the level of anti-bodies is high enough. And then the requisite period must pass to establish that your pet doesn’t have rabies or whatever.

Through all of this is a ton of paperwork and then when you have the all clear you ask the airline to book a ticket, who direct you tot he Irish government for a license to fly the pet, and then you book but you must have some basic treatments like anti flea and tick applied within a 48 to 24 hour window before your departure.

Even then there are temperature limits. The airlines that do transport pets (and your pet must be accompanied) will not do so if the temperature is above x or below y.

Dog-dog can fly from Dec 19 or so, once I get the final paperwork and treatments applied - so I’ll be going back for th pick-up. And I’ll be monitoring the weather at the airports that are hubs - Chicago could very possibly be too cold then so Atlanta or Florida may be my airport of leaving.

As it currently stands the whole process takes 7 months at the quickest. It’s likely in time that the anti-body tests could be removed and the 6 month rabies shot wait could be reduced to 3 months - certainly the advocacy groups that brought in the Pet Passport scheme are pushing for these changes also.

I have some work yet to do - but my dog is in a good place until I go back for the pick-up.