Pet relocation: what Hongkongers need to know about flights, health checks and more, plus six dos and don’ts
Dog owners tell us their experiences of relocating them and experts advise on getting pets familiar with their travel crates, when to use an agent to arrange a relocation, and how to avoid bureaucratic headaches
In September 2015, an Air Canada pilot flying to Toronto landed his plane in Germany to save a French bulldog from freezing to death in the plane’s cargo hold after the heating system malfunctioned. The dog’s relieved owner said afterwards: “It’s my dog, it’s like my child. It’s everything to me.”
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It was a heart-warming story, but one that would have raised fears in any pet owner looking to relocate their beloved animal overseas. Such fears became a reality for one local dog owner in September this year, whose eight-year-old golden retriever died on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong before take-off, apparently after it escaped from its crate.
George Yung runs International Pet Travel, based in Lai Chi Kok, and has been helping people bring their pets into and out of Hong Kong for 20 years. He says the incident on the Cathay flight could have happened because the dog was not used to being in a crate.
“There was blood where the door was, because the dog was trying to bite out of the crate. It’s possible the dog had only been given a few days to get used to the crate, but usually when we ship dogs we give the crate to the owners at least a month before departure so they have time to become familiarised with it.”
That is useful to know because flying a beloved pet thousands of miles across the world is a nerve-wracking experience for almost any owner. Earlier this year, Stella McClellan moved from Hong Kong to the US state of Texas with her husband and their 10-month-old dog, Winston. The journey included a four-hour layover in Chicago.
“I was very stressed before we left, especially hearing stories where somehow the pet didn’t make it onto the plane,” McClellan says.
