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'Fido' – Have you packed your passport?
Having made many ferry trips backwards and forwards over the Channel in the past few years, I thought I knew all there was to know about the 'system', especially when it comes to being accompanied by a dog or two.
Provided that the rabies injections are up-to-date and that the animal has been inspected by a French vet, been passed as being fit to travel and treated for worms and tics within a period of 24-48 hours prior to boarding a ferry, there is no problem. Or so I thought until one of my most recent exploits.
Having made my appointment with the vet for 5.30pm, I arrived at his surgery and, on being asked the time of my ferry - 5.00pm the following evening - all the necessary checks were carried out and the relevant parts of the document known colloquially as the 'pet-passport' completed.
On arrival at Le Havre the next day, I was told that we could not travel on that particular ferry due to the fact that, at the time of sailing, the checks and injections would have only been in place for 23½ hours rather than the required 24-48. Bearing in mind that the check-up is only for worms and tics rather than the far more serious problem of rabies, I thought that such severity was a little excessive, especially as I know that, had he have been asked, the vet would have altered the time shown on the documentation as to when the treatment was actually given.
Faced with the options of re-scheduling with LD Lines for their next sailing the following day, which would obviously necessitate hotel bills and wasted time: travelling back down to Caen to catch the 11.00pm Brittany Ferries sailing - at a very high price - or travelling two hours further north to pick up an 8.15pm sailing at Boulogne, by which time the dogs would be over the necessary 24 hour period and therefore free to travel, I made the latter choice - despite having to land at Dover rather than my original destination of Portsmouth.
I offer this salutary tale mainly in the hope that it will prevent any reader intending travelling with their dogs from making the same simple mistake, but also to point out that, as a notoriously 'tight' Yorkshire man, what went most against the grain as far as I was concerned, was the fact that I had already paid for my ticket on LD Lines and then had to pay for a second with another ferry company!