Maine Dog Owners Going to or from Canada Face Hard New CDC Rules

My wife and I have talked about traveling with our dog more.

Mostly because it's not only hard to find someone to watch him, but the rising costs of boarding a dog for an extended period adds a whole other expense to trying to leave town for a few days. Even the neighbor kid probably wants an arm and a leg to watch my pup for a weekend. So traveling with him seems like an option.

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But then you get into the whole issue of trying to find places to stay where it's ok for dogs. There are hotels and short-term rentals that will offer pet pricing. that can set you back quite a bit too. But the hassle of trying to take your dog out of the US and back in again, is about to become much harder than ever.

Most Mainers won't bring their pup to Europe, but maybe to Canada.

Now, I don't think it happens very often, that people would ever want to bring their dog overseas. It just sound complicated in every way. But some people might think it's no big deal to bring your dog just across the border into Canada. Maybe once upon a time... But not for long.

The CDC is bringing on a whole new set of rules regarding bringing dogs into the US... Even if you leave the US and come back with it. For instance, no dog under 6 months old can enter the United States, under any circumstances. So if you left the US with a 4-month old pup, you can't bring it back in until it's at least 6 months. Not to mention a whole host of other new rules. You can read all of them right here.

What's with this drastic new change?

In more recent years, there's been a growing problem with unknowingly bringing rabid dogs into the US. It's become such a problem, that the CDC had to bring in a whole new set of rules. With re-homers and rescuers traveling around more all the time, collecting and redistributing stray dogs, something had to be done.

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This doesn't mean people were doing anything on purpose, there just hasn't been quite enough oversight. The new rules will go into effect on August 1st, 2024. So we're just barely a month away. It's definitely something to consider if your Canadian travel plans included Fido and Spot. Especially, if they're just little pups...

We all love our pups...