Learning About Quarantine Laws the Hard Way

By Amy Fernandez

How quickly we forget. Not long ago dogs routinely endured a lengthy, mandatory health quarantine in order to enter island nations like Australia. Needless to say, determined owners have always found ways to evade those draconian safety measures. But generally they haven’t been A-List movie stars dumb enough to subsequently showcase their subterfuge on social media.

That’s basically what happened when Johnny Depp and his wife, Amber Heard, arrived in Queensland, Australia last May to start work on yet another one of those ever-popular Pirates of the Caribbean films. Reportedly, they traveled aboard a private jet, which obviously makes dog smuggling somewhat easier. According to their official version of what happened next, their assistant completed their obligatory landing cards and inadvertently checking off NO next to the question about bringing animals into the county.

That’s all it took for the couple’s Yorkshire Terriers to slip past Australian Customs officials. Unfortunately, their fans were paying closer attention. A few days later, a local dog groomer posted a few pics of Boo and Pistol on her shop’s Facebook page. Everything went to hell from there. Biosecurity officials swooped in and the couple found themselves immersed in a somewhat less sparkly type of publicity.

Australia’s quarantine regulations are nothing like they used to be prior to the introduction of the Pet Passport Scheme in 2009. It has drastically reduced the quarantine period, but the process still entails at least six months of complicated, nightmarish prep work for all the necessary government approvals, the import permit, microchipping, vaccinations, blood tests for Ehrlichia canis, Leptospirosis, rabies and parasites, and treatments for ticks and fleas. That raises several questions about what Depp and Heard were thinking when they decided this was a good idea.

Short URL: https://caninechronicle.com/?p=105631

Posted by Alex on Jun 7 2016. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.