Bring your pet to HK?

Does anyone know the process of bringing your dog to HK? Is this a dog-friendly city?

Thanks alot!

importing pets to HK

Never had this question before, surprisingly, since it's a good one.

The information you need is at the following HK Government web page:

http://www.afcd.gov.hk/quarantine/animals_e.htm

On that screen, you need to click the "Pet animals" option, then keep following the obvious options, i.e. "Import of pet animals and birds", then "Import of dogs and cats" on succeeding screens. The site even has a little applet you can enter your pet's vital info into to see if it's eligible to enter HK.

Frankly, the process looks a bit daunting, but I wouldn't know if it's that's hard in practice. Readers, any experiences here?

What I do know a great deal about is keeping a dog in Hong Kong. Mrs Tall and I kept a German Shepherd for years, till we had to put him down a couple of years ago. I don't know whether I'd recommend keeping a dog that large here again. If your dog is accustomed to being outdoors and having space to run, it'll no doubt have a tough time adjusting to life in a small flat. But lots and lots of people in HK have dogs, by no means all small ones, and given the life of a pampering-and-adoration-sponge our big dog had, it's certainly not impossible, or even cruel, I think.

What you'll need to worry about are of course where you'll be able to take your dog to do the business, whether or not members of your household will be around home enough to make sure this can happen, and so on. I think the important thing is making sure the dog doesn't have to spend too much time indoors alone.

Oh, and there are very good pet stores/kennels, etc. available here. I particularly recommend Ferndale Kennels:

http://www.ferndalekennels.com

They may be able help you with the importing as well.

Anyway, good luck, and let us know how it goes.

Mr Tall