Perro + Dinero = Dog in Spain

So...we have a dog. One question we frequently get when people here in Spain find this out is, "Did you get him here, or did you bring him with you from the U.S.?" 

This answer is, we brought him with us. His name is Ace. He's cute and super-sweet, and we definitely didn't want to leave him back in the U.S. when we moved. It was the middle of the pandemic, and moving to another country was already going to be stressful enough, and we thought it would make the transition easier on our kids (we have two of those) if, in addition to their friends, they didn't also have to leave behind their dog.

So we brought him.

Or, rather, we had him transported. And it wasn't cheap and Amazon wasn't about to pay for it. And did I mention it was the middle of the pandemic?

Now, normally what people do when they're going to move and they want to bring their pet is they arrange to bring the animal on the plane with them. Depending on the size of the animal, that might mean said animal can accompany these people in the cabin, or it might mean the animal has to impersonate luggage (albeit, very special luggage) and ride in a carrier, in the cargo hold. If the pet is an emotional support animal, they can be granted special status, and ride in the plane even if they're a little larger than is normally allowed. But that's a different issue, and in any case it didn't apply to us.

Our dog is just barely over the limit. At the time, I think the limit was ~18 lbs. (approximately 8kg), and he was 20 lbs. (approximately 9kg). (As an aside, don't quote me on that 18 lb. limit; you'll need to look it up yourself if you're really interested). In any case, the point is that he's not big, and we thought we might just be able to get him in the cabin with us.

As it turned out, however, because it was (as I may have mentioned) the middle of the pandemic, no airlines were transporting pets. None. At all. 

But let's back up for a moment, because we really didn't know this until we actually went looking for airline tickets. Before that, we researched what would be needed to bring a dog from the U.S. to Spain. In case you're wondering, it was the following:

1. Get a special veterinary check-up to confirm he wasn't carrying any communicable diseases. At first, we thought we needed to go to a special vet to get this done. After speaking with the vet he'd already been seeing, we found out that our vet could do the exam. It was a pretty standard deal and not too costly.
2. Ask the vet to submit some paperwork to the state veterinary office in the capitol (Olympia, WA, for us since we were living outside of Seattle at the time).
3. Wait for the state veterinary office to review the paperwork, place their stamp on it, and send it back. The most important part of this was that there was a time window: the exam and resulting paperwork was only good for a short period of time (IIRC, it was a week, but again you'll need to check on this for yourself as I may not remember correctly and the requirements may have changed since then.)
4. Get a "pet passport". This was essentially an identification for the dog stating who he belonged to and including the relevant veterinary details.
5. Find a flight.

I was actually surprised that there was no mandatory quarantine required upon entering Spain. This was really good news, as it would have definitely complicated matters.

Simple, right?

So, we went about getting the paperwork together, got the pet passport, and gave some thought to whether we could bring Ace in the cabin with us or if he'd have to ride below. But now we're back to the part of the story where we couldn't find a flight.

We talked to every major airline going into Madrid, or even getting close. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Thanks, COVID.

We were getting desperate. At this point, everything else was already in motion--the house was about to sell; our stuff was being packed up and carted away by the movers; and we had finally received our residency visas, which we'd picked up from the Spanish consulate in Seattle (it was actually just this guy's house in Bellevue. But that's another story.) 

It was at this point that we broke down and hired a pet transport company. We'd actually considered this early on in the process, but decided against it because it was so expensive. This first place we talked to wanted more than $5,000, which just seemed outrageous. Also, it annoyed us that the guy we were talking to kept referring to our dog as, "your fur baby", just as a matter of course. I mean, it's one thing to make a joke here or there, but this was every time. It felt like he really couldn't care less about the service he was selling, or about our dog, but if he kept referring to the dog as, "your fur baby", it would somehow seem like he actually did care. It really felt like we were being "marketed to", which immediately made me suspicious and mistrusting. (Let that be a note to anyone looking to market services to people already in a vulnerable position: just be honest and earnest, and don't try to blow smoke up peoples' backsides.) Anyway, we figured that, for $5,000, we could get the paperwork done and find him flight on our own.

But now we were up against some deadlines. So, after calling around to a few other services (there were a bunch of them at the time, all eager to take our money), we finally found one that quoted us around $2,500. Yep, you read that right. I'm still embarrassed to say how much we spent. It pretty much screams "privileged" and "idiotic", and probably a bunch of other things. All I can say in my defense is that, if you have a pet, you'll likely understand our desire to take the dog with us. And if you don't have a pet, well, maybe you can sympathize with us already going a little crazy between the moving, the paperwork, selling the house, and worrying about COVID.

And if you can't sympathize with any of that, well... either you legitimately had something more stressful going on, or maybe you didn't realize the rest of the world was dealing with COVID?

Anyhow, we hired the "pet relocation specialists" and assumed all would be well. We were wrong. First, they couldn't find a flight either. I guess I knew this was coming, but part of me was hoping that maybe they had some special deal with an airline that we weren't privy to. Regardless, even if they didn't have a flight right away, we figured it would only be another week or so before they found something. And fortunately, we already had a really great border that we'd been taking Ace to every time we took a family vacation. He absolutely loved her, and she him, so we weren't worried about him being properly cared for in our absence. So we took him to the boarder and said goodbye, and figured we'd see him in a week or so.

Three weeks. That's how long it took for Ace to finally get to Madrid. I suppose it could have been worse. First, it took forever to find a flight. (Lufthansa, in case you're wondering, was about the only airline that would even consider transporting an animal at that time.) Next, because it took so long to find a flight, all of the veterinary paperwork had to be redone. (Again, thank goodness we had such a great lady boarding him: she took him back and forth to the vet at least twice.) While trying to get the paperwork redone, the transport agency messed up and didn't make sure it actually got signed and stamped before they picked it up. You'd think that would be top-of-mind, given that they paid a courier to drive from Seattle to Olympia and back to get it (about a 1.5-hour drive, depending on traffic.) And because they missed getting the paperwork back, Ace missed his flight. 

After all that, it turned out that no airlines could actually fly the dog to Madrid. This point was actually not made clear to us in the midst of the paperwork-and-missed-flight fiasco; it only became clear later, when we were told that the dog would be flying into Barcelona.

Barcelona!?! Apparently, due to the heat, Madrid doesn't allow animals to be flown into the airport during the summer. This actually makes sense, given what we know now about the temperatures in Madrid in September. At the time, it was just one more twist to an already-crazy story.

To wrap this up, our dog was eventually put on a plane and flown to Frankfurt, Germany (a place I still haven't been). Once there, Ace was taken off of the plane by a handler and allowed to walk around (this was a special service for which we had to pay extra.) Then he went onto a second plane, on which he was flown to Barcelona. After arriving in Barcelona, he was picked up by a special pet courier and driven to Madrid (a 6.5-hour drive).

At 2:30AM, we finally received a call from the courier that he, and Ace, were parked outside. We went down to greet him. He was so excited when he heard our voices that the crate started rocking from him jumping around inside it. We were so relieved he'd finally made it.

In his excitement, he peed everywhere.