Bringing a Dog to Dominica 

Dominica has been on our list of places we must visit for years now. As we sailed up the Eastern Caribbean Island chain we were getting closer and closer! There is always a little worry when going to clear customs in any country, especially with a dog. A million questions race through my mind. Do we have all the right paperwork? Are all of her shots up to date? Did we need a special permit? Well, we finally arrived and successfully checked ourselves and our dog in. We wanted to share our experience bringing a dog to Dominica with you 🙂 

We did a lot of preparation for cruising the Caribbean before we left the United States. You can read all about that here. 

Requirements

In order to bring a dog to Dominica your dog must: 

Be vaccinated for rabies between 30 days and 12 months of arrival 

Have a Rabies Titer Test 

Valid Health Certificate

Be free of internal and external parasites 

Be approved for an Import permit 

Our Experience

The rabies titer test takes lots of planning so I suggest you do that while still in the states and in plenty of time before you leave (results can take a few weeks). We had ours done 2 months after Jetty received an updated rabies shot and 4 months before we planned on starting our journey to the Caribbean. 

A few weeks before we planned on arriving I emailed all of Jetty’s health records to forestvet@gmail.com to apply for an import permit. Two days later I received an email copy of her permit. Some countries require a vet to meet you upon arrival. I emailed asking if I needed to make an appointment and the Livestock Development Veterinary Services responded and said: “We have officers at the port of entry, to examine dog on arrival”.

We visited a vet in Le Marin, Martinique to get an updated health certificate and update a few of Jetty’s shots. Dr. Maximin was super nice and spoke good English, I highly recommend him. We made our appointment by emailing lesvetosdumarin@hotmail.com.

Roseau was our port of entry and Billy took our binder filled with our passports, boat paperwork, and Jetty’s documents to check-in. There was a spot to check if you had any animals on board and if they go to shore. He marked yes but no one asked to see the dog. He did not go out of his way to offer any extra info about us having a dog onboard. 

We thought we were good to go. We moved the boat up to Portsmouth in hopes of a better beach to walk her. A few days into our visit we were walking her on a leash along the beach and a man came up to us aggressively asking if we had seen a vet. We answered yes…. because we had just seen the vet in Martinique. He did not seem pleased with the answer and continued staring. 

Worried we had done something wrong we went back to customs and asked about the check-in process. They said we DID need to make an appointment to see the vet. 

Later that night we had a vet come meet us and fill out yet ANOTHER health certificate and charge us $150 EC’s. 

He told us that he has eyes on the beach that keeps an eye out for dogs (sounds like the guy on the beach makes a commission). 

Looking back now there is a bullet on the import permit that says 24-hour notice must be given before arrival. 

When I emailed asking  “ Do we need to have a vet meet us when we check-in or are we good to go? and the Livestock Development Veterinary Services responded saying “We have officers at the port of entry, to examine dog on arrival”. I took that as we did not need to make an appointment but you DO need to give 24 hours notice so they can make sure someone is there to check the dog. 

Are you planning on Bringing a dog to Dominica?

Hopefully, you can learn from our mistakes! Bringing a dog to Dominica is not difficult but it does take some planning.

Are you planning on bringing a dog to more than just Dominica?  You can find the requirements and our personal experience sailing through the eastern Caribbean with a dog here. 

Thanks for reading 🙂 

Sierra