Hi, need advice reference passport or quarintine system, whats best for the pup. Im in two minds if i will import a pup from europe in the distant future. Im living in N.ireland and if a pup being imported to N.I. is different from Mainland UK or Ireland.

If you import a pup on Pet Passport it will be 10 months old by the time it comes to you, but it should have been trained, socialised etc by its breeder in its country of origin. If you import a pup through quarantine it will be 8+ months when you get it, but will have been in kennels for 6 months so is unlikely to be trained or well socialised.

The cost is likely to be similar as obviously you would need to pay the breeder for the service and boarding the pup to 10 months of age, you won't know for sure the quality of it's training and socialisation, and you will only get to know it after 10 months old unless you get a chance to visit once or twice.

With quarantine the pup will be in solitary confinement but you will be able to visit as often as you like, so can bond with and do some training.

Having brought in a pup through quarantine we had no problems at all after his release, in fact he was at a show 3 days later, but most training and house training had to be done from scratch, but on the lead he was fine as had practiced in his run.

A lot depends on the breed though as some can handle new things in their stride (like our boy did) and others would fall apart.

during the passport scheme what is done to the pup reference injections and so on, is it allowed to stay with the breeder and socilize with the other dogs.

One question.... how do breeders in your country import new blood then? I mean for the whole Europe and USA you only need a pet passport and you can travel without any problems.... and so far it works perfectly :) . So I was wondering, there must be a lot of interbreeding in UK. Isn't it the whole point to bring new lines, new blood to the country and refresh pedigrees?

Which country are you referring to, Ory? As you say, we in the UK have the whole of Europe (and the US now) only needing a pet passport for travel. Dogs and bitches regularly travel to shows or matings. In the old days people imported into the UK and the dog did 6 months quarantine. Now they effectively do their quarantine before they travel.

hi, does that mean once the pup has done the origanal phase, after arriving at its new home after 8months, it can now travel around europe without doing any more time being confined. Im behind the times on this and trying to learn as much as i can before i continue. Thanks for all the replys so far.

Yes, under the pet passport scheme, as long as the rabies injections etc are kept up to date. If brought in under the quarantine system it would need to start the procedure to get a pet passport (which takes a minimum of 7 months) then.

At a great deal of expense is the answer. 

Some friends and I imported a pup in 2002 and up to leaving Quarantine he had cost us £3000 or at todays exchange rate $5297.

Personally, I wouldn't want to import a pup like this, just for the reasons people have mentioned - you miss out on their early puppy days, and it's a bit hit and miss as to whether the breeder is socialising and training them adequately and using methods you approve of.  (Reward, not punishment.)  In addition, any training the dog may have been given will be in a foreign language and when it comes to you, you will either need to re-train the dog to English or learn the foreign words for commands.  I'd be more worried about the socialisation issue and wouldn't want to trust anyone else to do that task for me.

N.I has the same rules as mainland UK for the Pet Passport scheme.

If I understand you correctly you live in Northern Ireland. If so it depends from where you wish to import from. If you intend to get a dog from the UK then its the same as getting one from Northern Ireland just go buy it. If you wish to import from Europe then as others have said you need the correct paperwork etc.

Bazza