While the dogs are being tested, Sarah Thomas of Pet Transport is on site with a veterinarian, already starting the process to safely ship the Australian dogs back home.\u00a0Pet Transport, a 50-year-old business, is the official pet transporter for the New Zealand Defence Force. Sarah came to the business in 2014 after her father bought it in 2002. She\u2019s now a company director.<\/p>\n
Importing an animal between countries is not for the faint-hearted. There are blood tests, vaccinations, and records needed for dog dimensions, microchip numbers and history of other overseas travel, all to comply with Ministry for Primary Industries requirements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe import regulations are pretty strict,\u201d she says. \u201cThe main difficulty we were dealing with for six dogs is that they come from multiple barracks across Australia, which meant different points of contact.<\/p>\n
We needed them all to attend vet appointments and get the requirements done on time. For us, it\u2019s getting hold of the right people and make the information understandable for them, because it can be quite confusing if you\u2019ve not done it before.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a well-worn procedure for her. She\u2019s organised the transportation of Royal New Zealand Air Force dogs to Australia for Exercises Pitch Black and Talisman Sabre. In 2024 NZ Army personnel and dogs were transported to Samoa for security work alongside NZ Police dog teams for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Forum.<\/p>\n
Outside of Defence, she\u2019s handled the passage of New Zealand conservation dogs to other countries and even transported hunting dogs for pig eradication programmes in Guam.\u00a0Having good networks in this industry is essential, she says. It also helps that Australia and New Zealand are rabies-free.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe New Zealand Government is very understanding when it comes to the movement of military dogs and police dogs. They just don\u2019t want any kind of biosecurity risk. So I\u2019m using the relationships we\u2019ve built up over the years to support these shipments and make sure it all works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Learning how to import dogs is another big output for this exercise, says Alan. It\u2019s a chance for the Australian Defence Force to practise the procedure.<\/p>\n
\u201cInteroperability between the New Zealand Defence Force and with our main ally and partner government agencies, has been invaluable. It\u2019s opened something of a Pandora\u2019s Box \u2013 in a good way \u2013 about where we can take this sort of training to in the future.\u201d
\n\u201cWe\u2019re all in the same fight to make our countries as safe as possible and be ahead of the curve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While the dogs are being tested, Sarah Thomas of Pet Transport is on site with a veterinarian, already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-313412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}