Does anyone have any experience of importing a pup from Sweden? Pretty sure they need to be
12 weeks old for their rabies vaccination, then wait 21days. How do I find out
Which airlines will accept dogs? (Without phoning them
All up?!!) has anyone driven over to collect a dog? If so how long did it take??
Many thanks!

This is a useful page and you can follow the links to find approved airlines and airports

https://www.gov.uk/pet-travel-information-for-pet-owners

3 CALENDER months for Rabies jab then 21 days wait

I am Swedish but live in the UK. A lot will depend on where in Sweden the breeder is. We have done the drive a few times. Each time took about 3 days in total when going to Stockholm. You can take ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland (roughly 8 hours crossing, but then you need to add time for boarding etc as you have to be there earlier) and drive through Holland, Germany, Denmark and take the bridge into southern Sweden -that drive from Holland to south Sweden can be done in one day, but further would be a bit much. Or you can take channel tunnel and drive through France, short bit in Belgium, then into Holland etc -that took us about 14 hours. To drive to Stockholm from southern Sweden is around 7 hours, at least. Or you can take ferry from Germany to Sweden, it goes to Gothenburg (not sure if UK to Germany is possible), or even ferry all the way to Gothenburg from Harwich. The ferry UK-Gothenburg is about 20 odd hours, the drive from Gothenburg to Stockholm (just assuming this is where you need to end up!) something in the region of 6 hours not allowing for breaks.

Pup needs to be 3 calendar months for rabies vaccination, not 12 weeks --so in reality most pups will be 16 weeks-17 weeks when old enough to use their pets passport.

Oh and I forgot to say -SAS will take dogs but it would have to fly as cargo if going into the UK. And when I said drive took 3 days in total I meant one way.

Thank you so much, a great help! Going to ask breeder where in Sweden she is (my geography is pretty dire!!)

I imported my puppy from Sweden back in May. He was 15 weeks old and the breeder, the transport company and Defra themselves never stated it had to be by calendar months, just that they must wait 21 days after their rabies jab at 12 weeks old, and that's how we planned it all out. My puppy was driven over by a transport company. Took about a couple of days and he did absolutely fine although had some initial reservations about getting in the car once home for a short time.

>He was 15 weeks old and the breeder, the transport company and Defra themselves never stated it had to be by calendar months,

I'd be curious as to which vaccine was used and think you were lucky they were not as clued up as they could have been. 

It depends what the recommendations for the Rabies vaccination are. 

Both Nobivac Rabies http://www.noahcompendium.co.uk/MSD_Animal_Health/Nobivac_Rabies/-39704.html
"Dosage and administration

A single dose inoculation of 1 ml is sufficient irrespective of size, species or breed of animal. Sterile equipment should be used for administration. Avoid contamination of vaccine with traces of chemical sterilising agents. Do not use chemicals such as disinfectant or spirit to disinfect the skin prior to inoculation.

Primary vaccination age*
3 months or older
Booster vaccination
every 3 years

Route of administration

intramuscularly or subcutaneously

* Primary vaccination may be administered at an earlier age (minimum in dogs and cats of 4 weeks of age), but then a repeat vaccination must be given at the age of 3 months. 

and Canigen http://www.noahcompendium.co.uk/Virbac_Limited/Canigen_Rabies/-41523.html Rabies vaccines clearly state that it is 3 months.  Wording as above

An earlier dose can be given but a second dose to be considered vaccinated has to be over 3 months."

DEFRA: Most vaccines can only be used on animals over 3 months old.
https://www.gov.uk/take-pet-abroad/rabies-vaccination-boosters-and-blood-tests

Also, and you will all have to take my word for this as I will quote in Swedish, from the Swedish Minstry's website:
I Sverige finns inga vacciner som kan användas innan djuret uppnått tre månaders ålder.

My translation: In Sweden no vaccines exist that can be used before the animal has reached an age of three months.

From page: http://www.jordbruksverket.se/amnesomraden/djur/resorochtransporter/hundarkatterochillrar/hundarkatterochillrarinforsel/inforselfraneu.4.5075e861320679518380006989.html

Yes, he received the nobivac vaccine at 12 weeks old and was ready to travel three weeks later. The earliest a puppy can have a pet passport is 15 weeks old so we were within legal requirements..

But Nobivac rabies is NOT licensed for single use at 12 weeks, the pup has to be 3 months -so NOT legal. Read the datasheet, it clearly states if given earlier than 3 months then a second injection must be given -and for pets passports, the 21 days is then after the second injection not the first.
http://www.msd-animal-health.co.uk/products_public/nobivac_rabies/090_product_datasheet.aspx

I sent a pup abroad last month with a pets passport and he was 12 weeks 5 days old the day he turned 3 calendar months old.

So he wasn't legal but the bods who checked didn't notice or check fully.  The vet is to blame for vaccinating too early and by issuing the pet passport. 

Not worth the risk, (depending on lengths of months) for 3 to five days .

12 weeks is considered 3 months though, just as an 8 week old puppy is considered 2 months old. Like I said I double checked with DEFRA who never mentioned anything about calendar months. If that is the case they need to make that crystal clear that is what they mean! My puppy arrived just shy of 16 weeks to be honest as his transport was delayed by a couple of days, and like I said, seen as the minimal age for a puppy to have a pet passport is 15 weeks old, I feel assured everything was above board.

12 weeks is 3 lunar months not calendar months & unless the word lunar appears on medication of any kind, the word month is a calendar month. It ain't rocket science

No 12 weeks is 12 weeks 3 months is 3 months, ditto 8 weeks is not two months in fact in most cases 9 weeks is and 13 weeks is usually 3 months.

Try entering a 24 week old puppy for a show as being 6 months old, or say a 48 week old puppy has reached it's first birthday (it will only be 11 months).

Also I'd be most upset if my employer paid me 4 weeks wages each month, they'd be stealing 4 weeks wages from me in the course of a year.

So these breeders who sell their puppies at 8 weeks are actually selling pups slightly younger/older than that age?

I did everything in my power to assure I was doing everything correctly including contacting DEFRA and going through it all with both my breeder and the transport company. I had no reason to believe things were not above board and even when relaying the info provided by DEFRA to my breeder, they agreed it was the right age and that DEFRA were the only people we needed to listen to.

Better than the breeder I contacted a couple of years back who was insisting she could bring the puppy illegally across to the UK at just 12 weeks old! and the countless illegal imports entering the UK without rabies jabs in the first place!

>So these breeders who sell their puppies at 8 weeks are actually selling pups slightly younger/older than that age?<br />

They are selling 8 week old puppies, not two month olds???

Unfortunately the people you checked with were mistaken s the rules clearly say vaccinated in line with manufacturers guidelines, and all the Rabies vaccines clearly state 3 months.

http://ahvla.defra.gov.uk/documents/ov/EU-PETS-guidance-notes.pdf
"4. Issuing a passport
4.1 A passport can be issued for an animal which has been fitted with a microchip and vaccinated against rabies
after the microchip has been implanted. It becomes eligible to travel 21 days after the completion of the
recommended vaccination programme, as per the vaccine manufacturer recommendation in the data sheet,
being day 0 the day that the vaccination is administered....."

I think the problem with the vets probably arises in that with puppy vaccinations they generally do work in weeks.

I think the problem with the vets probably arises in that with puppy vaccinations they generally do work in weeks.

And I think that's how things were worked out in regards to my puppy with both myself and the breeders etc.

Either way, what's done is done. He wasn't that much younger than what you're saying is the legal age as he was just shy of 16 weeks. To my knowledge we was doing everything right.

There are SO many cases of puppies being imported illegally, partly because of forged paperwork, partly because of sloppy checks. This is why the pets passport is now being replaced by a new one, there was a press release about it not long ago. It will be tamper proof for a start.

I bet a transport company transporting several animals that will hand over an entire bundle of passports may well get away with a cursory check or not all the passports checked properly. When I sent my puppy abroad I handed the passport to the transport people and they did not even look at it to double check everything. To play safe I had photocopied all of it to keep myself as proof. What is checked most carefully when you enter the UK with a dog is the date and time of the worming, in my experience. (I last imported in March.)

A month is not a precisely fixed time period. Its meaning can vary by as much as 10%. The variance
in "three months" is proportionally much less, but it's still not fixed, and as such it's still ridiculous that either governments or veterinary medicine companies use the term in their rules or guidance. I know that they do, I'm just noting that it's a ridiculous practice. It's inherently imprecise as well as potentially (perennially?) confusing. Why not just say 90 days, then people could count and know for certain what was what?

because it's actually easier to count months. 

Born on the 5th of the month 3 months of the 5th of the month, 6 months old on 5th of the month, and birthdays fall on 5th of the month.

Actually a lot harder to count 90 days, you'd need a calendar in hand to do it and can easily loose count (I know when counting 63 days for whelping date, that it's easier to use a whelping calendar), where calendar months you can do in your head, same as Road tax etc.

But surely in the administration of medicine it's more important to be precise than convenient? And if 90 days is awkward to count, say 13 weeks, which is easy to count with a calendar in your hand (which is not a difficult thing to achieve or a lot to expect).

People get confused because months are not usually used as an official measure in this way, becuse the term doesn't have a fixed meaning.

At the very least, if the govt is going to use the term, it should spell it out (" three calendar months, for example from the third of April to the second of July").

 

A month would be 3rd of April to 3rd of May, it's not imprecise at all and easy to see without a calendar to hand in most cases it is 13 weeks. 

Maybe I see it simplistically as I always have an exact date of birth for my dogs, and many pet owners don't if they have a rescue dog or unregistered one.

It can only vary by 1 day usually (some months being 30 and some 31 days) or if February is involved 2 - 3 days).

>(" three calendar months, for example from the third of April to the second of July")

Three calendar months would be from the third of April to the third of July. ;) A year doesn't run from your birthday until the day before your next birthday.

I can't see any way being easier than 3 calendar months. I exported a kitten to Sweden once and she was allowed to arrive without rabies vacc (does not work the same way the other way around!) if over AND under a certain age -I can't remember what it was now, but something like 86 days max. (It gave a 6 day window of opportunity.) Gosh did that take a lot of calculating and recalculating to ensure we got it right!

Obviously any single month is a precise measure of itself, but that is a tautology.

"Month" is plainly not a precise term, though, because it means different things at different times. There is a 10% difference between the length of February and the month either side.

As people are continually confused by this (which this forum proves as this is a perennial topic), why not just say say the precise "13 weeks" instead of the imprecise and confusing "three months"?

I think that because it is an inherently imprecise measure, people assume that that can't be what's meant (just counting 3 Feb to 3 April) on an official document. It's actually because it's TOO simple, and because they can see it is imprecise, that people assume it can't be what's meant and get confused.

As people are continually confused by this (which this forum proves as this is a perennial topic), why not just say say the precise "13 weeks" instead of the imprecise and confusing "three months"?

Well in this scenario (pets passports) "people" in general should have no NEED to get confused, as it is their VET who should tell them what date is right! I think for most of us here calendar months is so obvious as we show dogs.

It's only confusing because people are not reading the manufacturers recommendations, and relying on their vet, who is used to puppy vaccinations being done at weeks old.

The rules quite simply say vaccinated in accordance with the manufacturers guidelines which quite clearly say 3 months.  A month is a month not 4 weeks.  No one uses lunar months, except maybe astrologers.

Calendar months is actually much easier to understand, and used most in daily life,  and least likely for someone to make mistakes and easy for someone checking paperwork to work out without the use of a calendar, which is why it is used with so many things, like knowing when your MOT is out of date, when monthly direct debits for bills are due, etc.

I think it should be clearly stated they mean 3 calendar months too. To the inexperienced the whole importing process is a confusing one at the best of times with so much to think through and prepare for. As soon as I was told '3 months' I presumed that meant 12 weeks....I relayed the info back to my breeder and they agreed. Surely a breeder would know the difference? But that said, they'd never exported to the UK before.

I think I am so used to thinking of puppies in terms of weeks rather than months, that the whole 'month' thing totally confused me by the looks of things.

>I think it should be clearly stated they mean 3 calendar months too.

They do on the datasheets, no mention of weeks or days, just 3 months.

>I think I am so used to thinking of puppies in terms of weeks rather than months, that the whole 'month' thing totally confused me by the looks of things.

Now I only think of puppies in weeks up to 12 weeks (when puppy vaccinations are completed) after that it's always months, as a week later they are three months.

I worm once a month to 6 months and calculate entering shows from when they are 6 months, and calculate all age classes from then until they are two years old.

As soon as I was told '3 months' I presumed that meant 12 weeks....

I don't get that, because only February is 4 weeks long, all others are more, so it's logical that 3 months cannot be just 12 weeks. Like somebody mentioned before, human pregnancy is 9 months or 40 weeks -not 36 weeks so you get a full 4 weeks added by NOT counting a month as just 4 weeks.

If you type "within 28 days" into google you get the following official things which are delineated in that way:

Parking ticket appeals;
Issue of construction permits;
Definition of homelessness;
Emergency hospital re-admissions calculations;
Shop return policy;
Hospital episode stats;
Criminal extradition;
Booking at centerparcs;
Student visa application

Etc etc etc. Those are just the first few. The examples are endless.

If you type "within a month" into google, you get no such examples of common official use of this term, but loads of treatises on the different possible interpretations of this inherently confusing and imprecise term.  It is not in common official use at all, precisely because it is imprecise. That it may be in common use by people who show dogs should not be relevant. It is is a tiny percentage of the people who keep them.

28 days is not a month. The average length of a month is 30.42 days. But 28 days (4 weeks) is a very commonly used official term, whereas "a month", because it has no precise meaning, is not at all.

Therefore when confonted by an unusual official use of an imprecise term like a month, it is not surprising or unreasonable for people to interpret that to mean the very much more commonly used 28 days.

For this reason, it would be very much more logical to talk about thirteen weeks than three months. Anybody who cannot or cannot be bothered to count thirteen Wednesdays on a calendar should not be administering medicines or importing dogs.

Sorry a month,. precise or imprecise is a month, not 28 days.  It is used commonly (not just by dog show folk), check your monthly  direct debits, they come out the same day each 'month' unless non banking day.  Check monthly payment books for Water, council tax insurance etc.

None of this matters legally pups are considered vaccinated for the pet passport until over 3 months old. 

Quite correctly someone checking properly (comparing date of birth and current date of Rabies vaccination) could stop your dog entering the country and have your pet put in Quarantine as not being eligible to travel.

Surely not worth the risk for the sake of an extra few days.

It appears I imported my puppy one week to early then. He received the rabies jab exactly 6 days before he would officially have turned 3 months by the looks of things....

However, i was under the impression everything was correct and that puppies could legally enter the UK at 15 weeks old. Which, up until coming here ( which would make sense I guess considering the experience of such a topic here ) no-one has told me any differently.

You have no need to worry unless you travel again with him before his next Rabies vaccination is done.

Otherwise you risk some eagle eyed person checking more carefully.

"It is used commonly".

Not in this sense it isn't. I gave evidence in my previous post. In reply you have just repeated your previous assertion (which I have disproved with evidence) in bold type.

The examples you cite are intervals of frequency. Here we are talking about a single fixed measure of time. They are different things.

I have clearly not suggested that people should take a month to mean 28 days. I have explicitly said that this is not the case. What I have said is that

1. the vaccination guidance is confusing - which is a fact of which the perpetual confusion on this forum is evidence)
2. A month is an imprecise term (fact)
3. 13 weeks is a precise term (fact)
4. Fixed time periods are very rarely delineated in official documents in months (I gave a lot of evidence).

From all of which I concluded that it would be better if the guidance said 13 weeks than 3 months. So why suggest that I recommended people attempt to import dogs after insufficient time, when I did nothing of the sort?

>2. A month is an imprecise term (fact)

Irrelevant in this case. Just as puppies can be entered in shows when they are 6 months old (it doesn't matter that some may be two weeks older than others), the rabies vaccination needs to be given after three months. There are 12 months in a year, so so it's quite clear that if a pup is born on April 3rd it will be three months old on July 3rd, and that is when it can have its rabies vaccination.

It's not irrelevant in this case at all. It's the actual subject of the point I was making, which refers directly to the thread.

And it's not "quite clear" at all to a lot of people. It's consistently confusing to many people as evidenced by the repetition of this question on this forum over and over again. I made this point citing this (and plenty of other)  evidence earlier. Yet you have simply repeated this erroneous assertion in a more peremptory tone. Just repeating something more loudly/rudely does not make it less wrong.

A better way to have a discussion is to address the evidence or perhaps attempt to provide some to the contrary.

It's only confusing because most people are not checking the manufacturers datasheet, which is the vets job really, but as it affects the importer/owners it pays to check for yourself.

Take nothing for granted.

DEFRA info des state clearly that it is from the date the manufacturers advise.
http://ahvla.defra.gov.uk/documents/ov/EU-PETS-guidance-notes.pdf

"It becomes eligible to travel 21 days after the completion of the
recommended vaccination programme, as per the vaccine manufacturer recommendation in the data sheet,"

It's only confusing because most people are not checking the manufacturers datasheet, which is the vets job really, but as it affects the importer/owners it pays to check for yourself.


And in this case the Swedish breeder should have spotted their vet's mistake as it CLEARLY states on the Swedish Ministry's website that NO rabies vaccine that can be used before the age of 3 months exists in Sweden. You'd also have thought that the transport company would have spotted it! All in all those are the 3 people at fault vet, transport company, breeder. Not the importer who obviously trusted the passport to be correct -no reason NOT to.

It is sadly common for vets abroad to not take the passports seriously. I have had vets ask what time I wanted put on the passport (rather than pit the actual time), I have wtinessed a breeder tell a buyer their vet just signed the passport and handed over the worming pill to be administered whenever and the breeder actually said they had binned the pill, etc etc.