Who asks for what
- Airlines — usually proof of rabies vaccination, a health certificate issued within a set window before travel (often 10 days), and carrier dimensions. Rules differ by airline, not just by country.
- Borders and customs — rabies vaccination with dates and batch number, microchip number, and often an official government-endorsed certificate. Some destinations add a rabies antibody titre test, tapeworm treatment, or an import permit.
- Boarding kennels and catteries — core vaccinations plus, commonly, kennel cough for dogs, with a minimum interval before arrival.
- Hotels, rentals and ferries — usually just proof of current vaccination and sometimes flea and tick treatment.
- Any vet you see while away — full history, ideally including current medications.
Timeline that actually works
- 3–6 months out — check the official requirements for your exact destination on the destination government's site, not a blog. Confirm the microchip is registered and readable, since a rabies vaccine given before the chip may not count.
- 2–3 months out — get any required vaccinations or titre tests done. Rabies vaccines often need a waiting period before travel is allowed.
- 1 month out — confirm airline crate rules and book the pet's place. Space is limited and cannot always be added later.
- 10 days out or as specified — get the health certificate, and any official endorsement, within the exact required window. Too early is as invalid as too late.
- Day before — pack the documents, check the medication supply covers the whole trip plus a buffer, and confirm your offline copies open.
What to carry
- Original signed vaccination certificate and health certificate — some officials will not accept a phone screen.
- Photocopies, kept separately from the originals.
- Digital copies on your phone that work offline, plus a copy in cloud storage.
- Microchip number written somewhere other than the certificate.
- Your home vet's contact details and a shortlist of clinics near where you are staying.
- Current medication list with doses, and enough medication for the trip plus delays.
- A recent photo of your pet — genuinely useful if they get lost abroad.
Make the digital copy actually usable
A folder of blurry photos is not a record. Three rules make digital copies work at a border or a strange clinic:
- One document. Combine everything into a single PDF, in order, rather than twelve images.
- Offline first. Download it to the device. Airport and border data connections are exactly where you cannot rely on the cloud.
- Readable by a stranger. Dates, vaccine names, batch numbers and the vet's stamp must all be legible at a glance.
Common reasons pets get turned away
- Rabies vaccine administered before the microchip was implanted.
- Health certificate issued outside the permitted window.
- Missing official endorsement, where the destination requires a government stamp rather than only a vet signature.
- Microchip that cannot be read by the scanner at the border.
- Certificate names or numbers that do not match the pet's other documents.
Check each of those explicitly before you leave — they are cheap to verify and expensive to discover at a check-in desk.
Keep it ready year-round
Pettioe stores vaccination dates with the certificate images, tracks the next-due dates so a booster does not lapse right before a trip, and generates a date-stamped PDF pet passport with the records, microchip number, medications and vet contacts in one document you can download before you fly. Keep the originals in your bag as well — the PDF is the backup, not the substitute.
Requirements change. Always confirm against the official source for your destination before you travel.