Traveling internationally with pets? Cuenca author’s latest book is the essential guide for expats

By Jeremiah Reardon

Recently, I read on GringoPost, “Customs broker for pet needed in Guayaquil.” The poster coming to Cuenca wrote, “I find out that American Airlines states you must have a customs broker receive the dog at the Guayaquil airport.”

As a pet lover who shipped dogs a few times in the United States, I turned to my friend and fellow Cuenca Writers Collective member Ann Fourt, author of Relocating with Pets for Expats to advise the poster. She shared with me interesting information which I passed along to the poster.

“More and more airlines are requiring for international travel the use of either a pet shipper that the airline is familiar with, or a customs broker who handles pets for international moves,” she told me.

“Because of this additional cost, it sometimes is competitive to use a shared pet charter instead, which is a privately chartered flight shared by pet owners with the same destination. Dogs usually do not need to be confined to a crate and the owner or family travels with the pet on the plane.

“The shared pet charter company will handle the paperwork and documentation needed for the destination country,” Ann concluded.

Ann’s latest expat book
For advice on international travel with a pet, Ann does the research for you in her third book. She first published How to Become an Expat in 2021 and followed up with Medicare for Expats in 2024. Her new text is clearly outlined with appendices and extensive index to serve the needs of expat and wanna-be expat pet owners.

It’s becoming ever more expensive and complicated to move internationally with pets, unfortunately. There is a very tight timeline to get all the documents in order, and a delay of even a few days would be disastrous.

Ann helps you to anticipate the kinds of issues which would delay your travel plans and, possibly, cause distress to your pet. In this way, Ann’s book is a must-have book for expats traveling with pets.

Ann Fourt

About the author
Ann had an early spirit for adventure and exploration. At the age of three she got her first tricycle and took off down the street in Sacramento, California. No one thought much of it until the police brought her home, having found her pedaling the tricycle a mile away.

A CPA and former corporate tax consultant, internal auditor and certified fraud examiner, Ann has lived in Germany, Colombia and Mexico before moving to Cuenca in 2018. To write her new book, Ann interviewed pet parents living abroad and garnered many real-life tips and secrets for traveling with your pet and avoiding problems.

Travel to the U.S.
Requirements for moving pets internationally change constantly. The author has made every effort to include accurate information at the time of publication, January 2025.

Be sure to allow enough time before you move to research and understand all the requirements for bringing your pet. You should start planning a minimum of three months ahead and at least twice as many more when moving to Hawaii.

Ann Fourt’s book How to Become an Expat has recently been updated.

Entering the U.S. with a dog is now more complicated due to the new Center for Disease Control rabies regulations that went into effect in August 2024. But you don’t need to read over 300 pages of the regulation, Ann has done this for you and translated it into plain English.

From the U.S. to a foreign country
Information specific to moving out of the United States to a foreign country with pets is provided in two chapters. Chapter 8 covers foreign country requirements for rabies and other vaccination requirements.

In Chapter 9 the author discusses the European Union and UK post-Brexit regulations for pets. You will learn about entering European Union countries and obtaining the EU pet passport.

Additional topics 

1. Find out how to determine what the requirements are by country and what documentation is needed.
2. How your pet health certificate works, whether you need a government endorsement and the document’s time-frame.
3. How to cross international borders with your pets.
4. How to find out an airline’s safety record with transporting live animals.
5. How to measure your dog for a crate that will be acceptable by the airline.
6. Know about flying internationally with a service animal when you have a layover in another country.
7. Know the options for transporting your large-breed dog and its cost.
8. Learn how to research individual country requirements to import a pet.
9. Know which airlines were voted best for transporting pets as cargo by professional pet shippers.

All these topics and many more are addressed for expats pet owners and wanna-be expat pet owners like the GringoPost poster, and for those wanting to enter the U.S. with a pet. It’s on sale at Amazon along with Ann’s other popular books for expats.
__________________

Ann Fourt’s books Relocating with Pets for Expats, How to Become an Expat and Medicare for Expats are available on Amazon.