I have a dog. She is approximately
6 inches long and 6 inches high. She weighs 3 pounds, seldom barks and is
trained to use paper when we can't go outside.
Her favorite way to get around is to have me carry her in a black
handbag that was built for carrying small dogs. It has a bone-shaped black mesh
"window" and a clip to fasten to her harness. We also have a
regulation soft-sided carrier so she can scoot under the seat on an airplane.
An airplane. Huh. Take a dog with you on the plane? Only if you are willing to pledge your first-born
and all your back teeth and you are in a country where they aren't terrified of
dogs. Buses? The buses want you to put your innocent
little baby in the belly with the luggage and the heat and the fumes. This seems to be especially true in countries
that were once notorious for having live chickens in with the passengers.
I have smuggled her onto buses. And
got caught at the other end, too. No return trip. That's a nightmare story for another
time. This one is about getting the dogette
from Costa Rica to Panama.
So, I had checked all possibilities
and none of them looked good. For one
thing, I had managed to accumulate a tiny amount of stuff in Costa Rica, mostly bedding and a
few pots and pans, and I was very attached to my pillows in particular, hating
the thought of leaving them behind. I concocted
all sorts of elaborate schemes whereby I would roll the bedding into a black
plastic bag, mash it all down really well and lash the bag to my duffle so that
at the border and when changing buses I would be able to manage the duffle, the
bedding bag, the backpack, my purse and the dog carrier. What folly.
In Costa Rica I had successfully
smuggled the tiny dogette on both long distance and local buses many times in
her closed carrier. She is very quiet
and most people don't even notice her.
However, Panama tends
to be a bit more uptight about rules and regs than Costa Rica. In Panama the enforcers are soldiers
serious about their work. In Costa Rica they
did away with the military some twenty years ago. So learning that Panama
was officially no more welcoming to dogs than Costa Rica was definitely an Oh, s_
_t_ moment.
What to do? I thought about renting a car. Alas, not possible for various reasons. I ran scenarios where I took taxis between
towns. That actually might have worked
pretty well, looking at it in retrospect.
Taxis are less expensive in Panama
than they are in Costa Rica. It certainly wouldn't have cost more than the
option I chose.
In any case, how I would get
myself, my stuff and la dogette to Panama fell into the category of
what Alan Tutt, an excellent teacher of manifesting, calls "The Dread
Hows." When you desire to manifest
something, the instruction is to focus on the desired outcome and let the
universe work on "how" to make it happen. I have always been pretty good at manifesting
for myself, but I never really realized before this very moment that IS what I
do. At first I run through all the
options I can think of for accomplishing what I want and if none of them suit,
I don't worry about it. I just keep
going with the other aspects of my objective and something viable invariably
turns up in the empty sector. It just
sort of drops into my lap.
So I stopped fussing about modes of
transportation and instead began organizing la dogette's paperwork.
Now I had already gone through an
intense series of hassles with the dogette's paperwork back in the States. Costa Rica
and Panama
both require a rabies shot within 1 year and a certificate of good health. I had both those things when I left North
Carolina, but the customs officer in the San Jose airport KEPT the
International Health Certificate, which had cost me over $100 USD to get by the
time I finished paying for the veterinary exam, the form, and Fedex both ways
to get it to and from the appropriate government agency in a timely fashion. The customs official wasn't supposed to KEEP the
certificate, he was supposed to stamp it and give it back. I was so upset! But
there wasn't a thing I could do about it except get another health certificate
in Costa Rica. They told me it would cost me another $100
USD.
So I put it off and put it off. But after I finally decided on a date of
departure, I realized I had to deal with it and went down to get the
certificate. The vet had previously told me I should do it two weeks in advance
of my departure date.
This vet, who shall remain nameless
because I haven't a lot of nice things to say about him, showed up for our
appointment an hour late. His "exam"
consisted of holding the dog up in the air and turning her from side to side.
"Hmm, she looks good," he pronounced.
However, in spite of the fact that her rabies shot was current and did
not need to be repeated for 6 months, he thought we had better give her one
anyway. The system in the US where each shot is numbered and the number is
on the tag, on the certificate and recorded with the state is not good enough
in Costa Rica
to prove your dog has been vaccinated, so it was necessary to have a Costa
Rican rabies shot or the officials would not pass the health certificate. Or so he said.
As he was only charging me $40 for the form and another $16 for the
"exam" and getting the paperwork handled, and I wasn't going to be
able to get her into Panama
without the shot, I agreed, for $5. So
finally I was in possession of the stamped paperwork, and then I found out that
he had done only half the job! The
stamped paper had to go to San Jose
and be stamped some more!
So I hopped a bus ($6) for the 3
hour trip over the "Mountain of Death" to San
Jose, where I took a 15 minute taxi ride ($7) to the
address provided by the consulate as the place of stamping. But no!
Animals? No! This was the Ministry of Agriculture and "We never do
animals! Never! Never! Never! You must take this to Zapote!"
And where is that? Someplace way
out there ($13). My taxista, who was the
nicest man, got lost. To his credit once he knew he was lost he turned off the
meter until we arrived. There we first encountered
folks who wanted to send us someplace else, mostly based on my bad Spanish and
the taxista's limited understanding of the situation, until someone actually
looked at the paperwork and realized we really were in the right place. At that point they delivered us into the
hands of one of the good Doctors in the department who, incidentally, spoke
perfect English. A very witty man, he
gave me a rundown on how to get a dog across the Panamanian border. If you fly, he told me, you must have all
your t's crossed and your i's dotted.
You must have your health certificate with it's stamp, and proof of a
rabies shot. You must get signatures from the correct agricultural attorneys
and you must go to the Department of Exterior Relations and be stamped. Also
you must be prepared to pay the "Home Quarantine F'ee" (translation:
bribe) of $140 when you arrive in the airport so that your dog will not be
impounded for 30 days.
However, if you are driving, he
told me, it is a different story and everything depends on the official who is
working at the border that day. You need
only the health certificate and proof of rabies vaccination. Sometimes you do need the signatures of the
attorneys, sometimes not. "Fortunately
I am an attorney and since you have already paid, let's just stamp this now and
I will sign it and put the embossing seal on it."
He then told me that it has been
demonstrated that you can hire someone to watch the dog while you go through
the border-crossing process. Then, once you are safely on the other side you
could simply whistle for the dog, which would then make the crossing on its
own, sans paperwork.
A wonderful apocryphal tale,
no? Full of defiance and the derring-do
of pirates and revolutionaries other scoff-laws. Personally, I would never be
willing to risk my baby that way, plus the story does not say what happens at
the control checkpoint where the soldiers stop your car and demand to see your processed
paperwork for the car and passports. An
obvious dog passenger… hmm.
OK. So I had all the t's crossed
and he insisted that I did not need to cross the final i since I was not
flying. So we skipped the Department of
Exterior Relations and my taxista delivered me ($14) back to the station for my
bus ride back across the Mountain
of Death ($6). Adding it up, we see that $40 + $16 + $5 + $6
+ $7 + $13 +$14 +$6 = $107 which is $7
more than I would had had to pay a vet who knew his business, not to mention
that I could have spent the day at the pool instead of taxiing around San Jose
in the heat. So unless you are already
IN San Jose and have a car with air conditioning and all the time in the world,
if you are ever offered a deal on an
international health certificate for your dog in Costa Rica, run the
other way!
To be continued…
