# Transporting pets from Australia to New Zealand



## travellingmog (Mar 31, 2016)

Hi everyone,

I've joined this forum just to ask about moving pets from Australia to New Zealand!

My very ill dad in Australia is going to have to rehome his two cats, and one option is to have them sent to me in NZ. 

Does anyone have an agent they recommend or would avoid?

Or does anyone have an idea of how much would be saved by organising the paperwork and freight ourselves? Is it worth it?

It would be easier by far to pay an agent to deliver the cats door-to-door, but the only quote I have so far is for $3800 (can't remember which currency). 

As this is from Canberra to Dunedin, presumably this includes three flights (domestic at each end plus international). Whereas if we arranged all the transport and paperwork ourselves, someone would drive the cats from Canberra to Sydney and I would drive to Christchurch to collect the cats. (Long journey for the cats, but I could let them stay in an aunt's spare room for the night in Christchurch for e.g.)

Thanks!

BTW the registration bot made me put in separate countries for 'from' and 'moving to,' so I did it on behalf of the cats


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## zombiemoo (Oct 5, 2016)

Hello,
I was just wondering how you went with your pet transport? I know this is an old thread but I'm having trouble getting info as well. My family is looking to move to Dunedin from Townsville QLD next year and any advice would be greatly appreciated.


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## travellingmog (Mar 31, 2016)

Aw, thanks, my only reply! 

Good luck with your own move.

In the end some friends in Australia just happened to be planning to adopt two cats at that time, so we were able to help each other out and we didn't have to go down the international transport route, just a drive from Queanbeyan to Sydney.

I don't remember the details now, but I remember phoning around some of the airlines and found either they were impossible to get hold of, or they had very strict rules around only allowing people to transport their pets using an agent.

Depending on where you are, you would have the option of door-to-door transport, which would involve paying the agent for a flight for each leg (they only transported by air) or of taking the pets to and collecting them from the city of the interanational port, placing them in kennels/cattery for a night, and arranging for the agent to collect from/deliver to there. Door-to-door is more expensive but less hassle (hard to say which is more stressful to the animals).

I would just contact several agents for quotes, and do it ASAP. A big thing you might want to start doing now is find out which immunisations you have to get, and there might be some sort of log that has to be completed for each pet over a period of some weeks or months. I don't know whether you need to go through an agent for this. My experience of vets is that not all of them know the system when it comes this sort of thing, so make sure you know rather than relying on the vet to know.

Good luck, and I hope you enjoy Dunedin!


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## travellingmog (Mar 31, 2016)

Oh and IIRC the pet must be microchipped before or at the time of the start of the mandatory immunisation log (pet is scanned at the time of each log entry)


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## zombiemoo (Oct 5, 2016)

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I managed to find a local company that transport pets to NZ and will organise everything YAY! Just have to decide which school for the kids to go to now. Thanks again for the chat.


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## travellingmog (Mar 31, 2016)

Fantastic, good luck! If your experience with trying to choose a school is anything like ours, you will find that everyone will say brightly, 'Oh, there are no bad schools in Dunedin' and it will be quite a long time down the track before anyone actually is willing to tell you what they really think. It's all very sweet that there is the sense of community solidarity, but not very helpful!

In case it's any help at all, I have friends who are genuinely very happy with the following primary schools: Opoho, NEV, Kaikorai, Grant Braes, and some of the Catholic primaries (Tainui, St Joseph's city, St FX). Good luck!


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## zombiemoo (Oct 5, 2016)

It's a start, thanks for your help.


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