Oh my god! What a fiasco to export a dog out of Peru. Just ask Justin the vet student. I doubt he’ll ever want to hear to words ‘Peru’ and ‘dog’ mentioned in the same sentence again.
That poor bugger Justin has been stuck in customs at Lima airport for 10 hours today. Toby the other poor bugger has been stuck in a dog crate in the customs warehouse after surviving his first flight from Iquitos to Lima.
No kidding it has taken volunteer Justin two solid weeks, about 500 emails, who knows how many phonecalls, constant hounding (pardon the pun) of certain vets, and I reckon at least a couple of swear words to get the ‘right’ dog crate, and that bloody health certificate.
When I turned up to work this morning I breathed a sigh of relief, Justin & Toby were gone. They had obviously made it to the Iquitos airport for their 5am rendevous with customs. Later I met Justin’s pal Santiago & I quizzed him. “Justin gone? All go well? Toby on the plane?” Well, apparently everyone slept in by an hour and it was touch and go, but ultimately it was up, up and away, dodging turkey vultures along the way.
I was a little sad they had left but happy that Toby was off to his new life in Wisconsin. Saved from death on the Iquitos streets and now off to meet Justin’s friend Angela, and to a life of skipping through snow filled streets wearing designer coats and doggie boots.
All was well until at 5pm I heard a very sad faint voice on the phone, “Beth, they won’t let Toby leave Peru”. “What the ……!!! Why not?”
Despite the fact that Toby is CASTRATED, doesn’t have a pedigree, & his father could be a labrador for all we know, he needs to have a special certificate because he has been called a PERRO SIN PELO on his customs certificate. Some wee officious Peruvian Johhny (Juaney?) has invented a new regulation & all ‘perros sin pelo’ must be microchipped, have a special certificate, & someone has to decide if he is ‘small’, ‘medium’ or ‘large’…..well, derrrr, do we need a court of law to decide that. By the way this is the same country that freely exports its endangered wildlife without a care in the world, so go figure!
Of course, customs don´t want to actually look at Toby and he may well be ‘Toby’ the jaguar for all they care.
I tell Justin, “Just bribe the idiots. Tell them he’s a crossbreed. Put a cross on the certificate”. Apparently they were beyond reason.
What a predicament. Justin has a flight to the USA at midnight that can’t be changed. Toby is in the warehouse that closes in 30 minutes. No one can write the ‘special’ certificate until tomorrow….well, that’s just typical.
Ester and I call everyone we can think of in Lima. Finally a plan. Justin takes Toby to Ester’s cousin’s house for the night & he will return to the airport & catch his flight to the USA. Poor cousin gets the hideous job of organising more paperwork in the morning, and getting Toby onto his flight to Atlanta where he will spend the night in a boarding kennel, and then take another flight to Wisconsin. This is a work in progress & I pray it goes smoothly (ha, ha, come on this is Peru!) Tomorrow I may well be on a flight to save Toby for the 2nd time, and I promise I will TRY very hard not to kill anyone when I get there.
Any idea how much all this is costing Justin?? He’s a poor vet student with a VERY BIG HEART and now a big debt. Sorry Justin I wish I never said “Hey Toby’s a great dog. He had a crappy owner who threw him into the streets when he got sick. Why don’t you take him back to the good life in the states?” If only the world was filled with people like Justin….. I wouldn’t be back in the vet clinic at 1am removing a rubber band that has been maliciously placed around a kittens leg. The kitten’s leg is gangrenous & swollen, & tomorrow I may have to remove it too.
