Moving Abroad with Stewie
Note: This post is based on my personal experience bringing Stewie from Canada to France in May 2025. Rules and requirements can change, so make sure to double check all airline, EU, and CFIA information yourself before travelling with your pet.
When I decided to move to Paris, I knew I wanted to bring Stewie with me. I knew that Europe was a pretty dog friendly place overall, so I was confident in my decision to bring him with me. There were a few important things I learned during the process of bringing him here that I’ll share for anyone considering moving or traveling to France with their dog! It’s definitely possible with the right preparation.
Booking Your Dog on the Flight
The first thing I did was add Stewie to my flight, which was about $100 CAD. I checked to make sure my airline (WestJet) allowed pets in cabin and I just used the chat function on their website to add him to my flight. It’s important to do this in advance, as there are sometimes limits on how many pets can be in the cabin, so adding him in advance was important to ensure I could take him on. The chat function worked perfectly well and the agent added him easily and provided me with the WestJet pet carrier requirements. I found a suitable one on amazon, here.
They asked me for his breed, weight, and age. The requirements to take your dog in the cabin with you is that they can fit under the seat in front of you, otherwise you will have to put them in cargo or look into other options. I’m not sure what the restrictions are regarding weight, but for reference Stewie is about 12 pounds and I had no issues. If you’re unsure if your dog is the right size for travelling in the cabin, I would recommend speaking directly to an agent.
EU Health & Pet Travel Requirements (Canada to France)
In terms of health requirements to bring him into the EU, that ended up being completely fine, but finding all the info was a bit tricky. The EU requires a specific health document to be completed by your vet in Canada, which also has to be certified by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
The health document needs to be completed within 10 days before your day of arrival in the EU, so that doesn’t leave much time for wiggle room if anything goes sideways.
The first thing I did was contact my local vet. I took Stewie in for a check up about a month before leaving, just to make sure he was up to date on all his vaccinations. He wasn’t due for a rabies vaccine yet, but in France dogs are required to get the rabies vaccine every year, so in order to be compliant with France’s regulations, Stewie got a rabies vaccine at this check up.
At that appointment I spoke with my vet regarding the health document, and luckily she was somewhat familiar with the process so I felt confident that he was good to go health wise, and all that I needed to do was bring him back for the document completion and then to the CFIA. I strongly recommend scheduling these appointments as early as possible, especially with the CFIA office as they had very limited appointments available.
10 days before departure I took Stewie in to complete the health check documents, and my vet was able to complete them in about 30 minutes. Normally they require 24 hours to complete the forms, but my vet just happened to have time to do it right then and there, but I would account for that when scheduling your appointments.
Two days later I took the documents to the CFIA (which your dog does not need to be present for), and that was very quick, about 5 minutes and I believe it was only about $30 CAD. After that Stewie was all ready to go, and I packed his documents in my carry on backpack.
Overall, this process wasn’t necessarily hard, but it was a bit stressful with the timelines and just wanting to be sure that the documents were all completed correctly. If you’re going through this process, I would highly recommend an extra health check earlier on in the process to talk to your vet about the process, and to ensure your dog is up to date on all medications and vaccinations.
Travel Day
The day of travel preparation was fairly simple. Our flight left Victoria at about noon, so in the morning I made sure to feed Stewie early and try to get him to drink water early as well. The day before leaving my family had a bbq where Stewie was running around the backyard all night, so that burned a lot of his energy. That morning I took him for a walk just to make sure he got some movement as well.
I let him go to the bathroom at the airport right before heading inside, and then he pretty much stayed in his carrier until we landed in Calgary. Going through airport security I walked through the scanner with him and everything was fine.
Something I didn’t know is that you get to board first, at the same time as families with young children when you have a pet (at least with WestJet), so that was nice. It’s not fun sitting on the plane longer than you have to, but it was nice having a bit of extra time and space to get him settled under the seat and make sure we were set with everything we needed.
The flight attendant also came over to let me know the rules, which were that he must stay in his carrier the whole time but that I can unzip it to feed and give him water as needed. The flight went smoothly, he slept the whole time and didn’t make a sound. I really credit this to crate training him as a puppy. If your dog isn’t crate trained I highly highly recommend getting them used to the carrier, as I can’t imagine how stressful it would have been had he been restless, or whining or barking during the flight (which there were actually two other dogs on the flight from Victoria to Calgary that barked the whole time).
I was asked a few times if I was planning on giving him any sedatives, which I considered talking to my vet about but I just ended up forgetting to ask and I honestly felt pretty confident he would be fine. I have no experience with that, but it’s certainly something you could speak with your vet about if you’re worried.
Once we got off the plane in Calgary, I let him out of his carrier to get more walking in. You may have to check airports individually, but the Calgary airport does allow for dogs to be walked on leash. There are also several pet relief stations around the airport, making it easy to let your dog go to the bathroom as needed. One thing I would recommend is bringing some sort of baby or wet wipes to clean their paws after using the relief stations.
On the next flight from Calgary to Paris, again he slept the whole way and was totally fine. I gave him a few bites of food throughout the flight but no actual meal. I tried giving him some water too but he refused to have any. He started to get a little bit restless by the last hour of the flight, just moving around a bit more, but he still stayed calm which I am very thankful for.
Then once we landed in Paris, I went through customs expecting to handover all his documents and they didn’t even ask for them. I said to the agent “oh, I have my dog with me” and he just said “that’s fine” and let me go through. Even though they didn’t ask for the documents, it’s important to have them as I’m not sure what would happen if they asked for them and you didn’t have them.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I think things went as smoothly as they could have for my first time taking Stewie abroad. Like I said before, it was never a question that I would bring him. It’s such a big life change moving to France, and having him with me is like a little slice of home that I wouldn’t trade for the world.
The only thing I think I would do differently next time is bringing wet wipes for his paws in the airport for the pet relief stations.
If you’re considering moving or traveling abroad with a dog, don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions!
