As we know, up until recently there was no need for animals to be rabies vaccinated or have a passport to travel between the UK and Ireland. That changed in January 2012 when the passport titre test requirement was dropped and animals could travel into the UK from Europe 3 weeks after vaccination; at this time the legal situation changed and Ireland (being a separate EU country) was included in the scheme. In practice this meant nothing - passports were never (and as far as I know are never) checked in either Ireland or the UK and many people never bothered to get one.

Today local Trading Standards siezed a cat that had come from ireland without a passport. in law it had been illegally imported, and the owners were given the choice of quarantining it or euthanasing it: they chose euthanasia.

It might be sensible, therefore, if you're planning to travel to Ireland with your dog to consider the journey in the same way as you would a trip to mainland Europe, and get a passport.  It might never ever be checked - but at least you wouldn't be put in this situation.

Oh Jesus how awful.

We took the trip via ferry with our bitch just a month ago (without a passport after checking with the ferry company if we needed one)

Have there been other cases like this?

Not in this particular area; you'd need to contact local trading standards.

I have found this on FB it is from the Irish Government to an Irish rescue that rehomes in the UK, which states that dogs from Ireland to the UK need a PP & a rabies vax if commerically being transported, however it does say ALL dogs, cats, ferrets  ! Oddly enough they don't have to be tapeworm treated as both UK & Ireland are free from the tapeworm that the treatment is for :-(

Apparantly there is a possibility of a derogation from rabies vaccination for non-commercial pet movements from the 1 January 2015 :-(

This is really scary, I shudder now to think what might of happened when we travelled back and forth last month! Told by the ferry company we didn't need a PP after researching as much online

This is really scary, I shudder now to think what might of happened when we travelled back and forth last month! Told by the ferry company we didn't need a PP after researching as much online