September 29th 2013

Saving The Day!

We had decided to depart on the 28^th and, on our second day in Providenya, we called the Customs and asked them to come and check us out of Russia so that we could leave as early as possible the following morning. As always, all the boat's documents were in order as were our passports and visas but this time, Latte's papers presented a problem.

She has two passports, one French and an older one from Spain with the rabies antibodies test certificate. All her current health data are documented in her French passport which is a so-called EU Pet Passport but now this was not enough. The customs official wanted a copy of a separate health certificate which, of course, we couldn't present because we didn't have one. He asked us to try to find it, and said that he would come back the following morning to see all the documents and check us out of the country.

Before leaving Finland, I had contacted the Russian Consulate in Turku, the Russian Embassy in Helsinki, the Finnish Consulate in St. Petersburg, and EVIRA in order to find out which documents we should have for Latte. According to the information received, all that was required was the EU Pet Passport with valid data. And true enough, when we arrived in Krohnstadt, Russia, the customs officials checked Latte's passport, marked her in the Passenger Customs Declaration Form as Dog Named Latte plus her micro chip number, and that was that. Since Krohnstadt, no official has paid any attention to Latte or her papers until now.

Since we are highly allergic to bureaucrats and always think the worst of them, we were not willing to take any risks. We wanted to get out of Russia and to do this, we needed a health certificate for Latte, it was as simple as that. Thus, we phoned a small animal clinic in Finland, asked them to write the health certificate and send it to our satellite email address. The certificate arrived sometime during the night, we printed it out in the morning and, to our great relief, we now had all the documents required by the bureaucrats.

We have always been happy that our daughter is a veterinarian but never as happy as we were now. Thank you, Saara, for saving the day!