Has the vet messed up our trip to France ?

cathy57

My son and I are travelling to France on Thursday from Folkestone. He planned to take his little dog with us. Therefore, he had him vaccinated a couple of months ago. Today, he had an appointment at the vet to collect the dog’s health certificate which you can only get in the 10 days before travelling.

When he arrived at the clinic, my son was not able give him his dog’s health certificate because the vet who vaccinated him back in March had failed to record the vaccine rabies batch number. 

It’s a complete disaster for us at such short notice. Is there anything we can do ? Any advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you.

tacpot12

You might ask the surgery if they can trace the other dogs that received the same vaccine either side of his dog, and identify the correct batch number from the records of these other dogs. This would only work if the vet treating those animals had recorded the batch numbers, the surgery knows they only had one batch of that vaccine on hand at that time, and the owners of these dogs are prepared to co-operate as the batch number might only be recorded on their dog's health certificate and not on the surgery's records. It's a long shot, but under the circumstances they should be pulling out all the stops for your son.

If they cannot give you the health certificate you need for travel, the only options are for your son not to travel or to find a kennel or other dog sitting service that can look after the dog. Is there a relative that knows the dog that would look after it, or house sit while your son is away?  

Your son should be able to sue the surgery for the cost of kennels, sitters etc, but is under a duty to minimise the cost of this as far as possible. They will probably pay up without being sued if approached in the right way (i.e. politely but firmly). If he has home insurance, he should check to see if he has legal expenses protection (he might also check any travel insurance he may have purchased for the legal expenses protection), and if he has this, then he should call the Legal Help line today and get advice from them.

I'm sorry but I don't know if there is anyway around not having the health certificate. 

cathy57

Thank you very much for your very detailed reply. Fortunately, we have now found someone we can trust to look after his little dog. The surgery did not seem willing yesterday to cooperate much. They only offered a free new vaccine which wouldn’t have helped the situation anyway. 

We will certainly pursue for some compensation.
Again, thank you very much for your advice.