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How far in advance should you start preparing to move a pet abroad?

For the strict destinations, half a year is not caution — it is the arithmetic of the rules: Australia and Japan both contain a 180-day wait, and New Zealand's vaccination and titer windows force about 6 months. The UK needs only 21 days after a primary vaccination. Work backwards from your destination's longest single wait, then add a month for laboratories and permits.

Every route's timeline is dominated by one longest wait. Find it first: Japan — 180 days from the titer blood draw. Australia — 180 days from the sample reaching the lab, plus permit processing of 20–40 business days (DAFF warns it can reach 123). New Zealand — the primary vaccination must sit 6–12 months before shipment, which fixes your earliest ship date the day you vaccinate. Hawaii — no single long wait, but two vaccinations more than 30 days apart plus lab turnaround of 1–2 months plus the 30-day FAVN wait adds up to 3–4 months.

Laboratories are the hidden variable: Hawaii's approved labs currently take 1–2 months to return FAVN results, and Australia's permit queue is measured in business weeks. None of these queues can be paid to move faster. The owners who end up paying for quarantine are almost never the ones who misunderstood a rule — they are the ones who started a fixed-length clock too late.

Related questions

I have 6 weeks. Where can my pet go?

From the US: the UK fits (21-day wait after a primary vaccination, if needed), as do low-friction destinations generally. Japan, Australia and New Zealand do not fit inside 6 weeks under any circumstances — the waits are in the rules themselves.

Can a relocation company shorten the waits?

No. Companies manage paperwork, bookings and logistics; the 180-day waits and vaccination windows are set by governments and apply to everyone. What a good company prevents is a paperwork error restarting your clock.

What should I do first, today?

Scan the microchip and pull the full vaccination history. Those two facts decide which clock you are actually on — everything else is scheduled from them.

✓ Last verified: 2026-11-11

Official sources for this page

We check each rule against the exporting country's official page and the destination country's official page. If the two disagree, we show the disagreement instead of guessing.