The tourists may have given Lebanon a wide berth this year, but the country’s hardy expats have ensured that airfares to Beirut during the summer season can still take one’s breath away. But even these prices are a bargain when compared to the relative cost of flying an 8kg, 3-year-old beige pug to London.
When we decided to move there was no argument: Lady was coming with us, a decision made easier after we learnt that dogs entering the UK from Lebanon were no longer subject to the six month quarantine process, which, apart from adding to the emotional stress of moving would also have cost north of $4,000.
The new system, I was told, was relatively straightforward and the issue of money didn’t even appear on my radar. I mean how much could anyone charge to put a small crated dog in a plane for four hours and check it for fleas at the other end?
I was put in touch with two people who had made the same journey. They were happy to share their experiences and sent me threads of dry email correspondence from the UK border agencies, as well as more colourful exchanges with various customs clearing agents in Beirut and a bemused manager at Middle East Airlines whose specialist chosen subject was clearly not live animal cargo and who had clearly never dealt with two feisty British dog lovers.
It was all quite bewildering, so I decided to leave the Beirut end of the process and crack on with sorting out the UK requirements. First up was to get Lady microchipped and tested for rabies. The chipping was easy (essentially a bar code was inserted near her left jugular) but the UK required the blood sample be drawn at least three calendar months before travel and sent to Belgium for independent testing. This first baby step cost $300.
The next hoop was trickier. Lady had to be dewormed “no less than 24 hours and no more than 120 hours before expected arrival in UK, the details of which must be recorded on the 3rd Country Certificate (annex II)”. This was clearly going to need a bit of focus and, as far as I could tell, was all about synchronicity. Lady should be dewormed with enough time to have the 3rd Country Certificate (Annex II), which I still had to find, completed and stamped by both the vet and the necessary Lebanese ministry and yet allow enough wiggle room to book a place on a big enough aircraft within the five-day window (the smaller MEA Airbuses, my customs agent assured me, would not offer enough ventilation in the hold). It was, in effect, an ever-narrowing corridor. The $70 it cost to deworm was, in such circumstances, a mere detail.
But this is where the customs agent comes into his own. More a fixer than anything else, Ali Assaad had been recommended by BETA, the wonderful Beirut animal rescue organisation from where we adopted Lady.
Not only was Ali a whizz of a customs agent, who genuinely liked dogs, he was also something of an emotional crutch during the final anxiety-filled days when I was required to fill and have authorised a bewildering (for me anyway) amount of documentation: 3rd country certificate (annex II); HM Customs and Excise document (C5); Heathrow Animal Reception Centre form; and scans of all Lady’s vaccines and treatments.
Ali’s gentle guidance – getting Lady on the plane; facilitating Beirut clearing fees and making “other sundry payments” cost me – in the finest Beirut tradition, exactly $1,000. A bargain at the price. Without him, I would by now be screaming obscenities from a padded cell.
But if I thought Beirut was expensive, I hadn’t counted on UK clearing fees totalling a whopping $710. By now, I was haemorrhaging so much money that when I was faced with the choice of “up to a five hour wait” at Heathrow airport for Lady to clear customs or spending an extra $275 to have her chauffeured home in a climate controlled van, I chose the latter without blinking.
Total cost? $2,355. Worth it? Every penny!
Michael Karam is a freelance writer based in Beirut and Brighton
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