Collecting dogs and crates from Auckland

[Jo Jo]

Aaah, I'm glad all your pets arrived safely in the end - it's brilliant being reunited with them, isn't it?

when you say they are put into a crate, is that a wooden box? i thought they were put into a cage that they can see out of?

It is a wooden box, but it has a grille on the front so they can see out and plenty of air holes - like a wooden version of a normal pet carrier.

[catt]

Glad everything sorted and you have your pets...........sure does make a difference having them with you ........ we went with Golden Arrow too and they were great :-)

[frootbat]

Good to hear they all made it safely over. We had a similar 'incident' with our lab being ill shortly after arriving (and before the pet insurance kicked in!) but she's fine now.

I would recommend anyone bringing pets over to take it really easy with them for a few days as they may look fine, but you don't really know what effect the 24+ hour journey has had on them. When we go back we will be doing this.

Incidentally they do let them out the crates when they get here, well they did ours, we saw her dragging some poor MAF person over to her first patch of NZ grass just outside the building, as we were travelling about the airport doing the paperwork. They put her back in though before we picked her up.

Helpful tip about the crates, although in the grand scheme of things the cost of a new one is but a smidgen of the whole travel costs! We're saving up for her return journey already!

[sinead&dave]

thanks for the info guys!!

[Mamee & Co]

Glad that all went well. Our dog will be getting flown to CHC, but then she is tiny compared to a Newfie! I was interested to read about the gastric bloat as given her sensitive digestive system it will be something that we will have to watch out for, but due to this had intended asking them to feed her rice only for a couple of days before departure and again when she arrives in NZ, before moving her back to a more normal diet. Trying to work out, at the moment, how to co-ordinate everything, but until then house sells it is all theoretical!

[girlwithanewf]

Just picking up on one or two things people have mentioned, the wooden boxes are large, for cats they are definitely bigger than the plastic cat carriers you get. Our dogs didn't get let out until three hours after they had landed but I think that was probably down to the individual inspector. We had expected that to happen but we do have a large dog and he said he would not be able to get him back in the box again! There was also a delay due to Air NZ not sending over the original documentation. But all is well in the end.

[moses]

Girlwithanewf. Thats a good point. When I collected my two I had to hire an estate (station-wagon they call them here) as the two crates would not fit in a normal car the same two cat boxes would. The size of the crates is also determined by the SIZE of the animal hence we had one normal cat crate and one jumbo crate for my large boy.
Anyone collecting animals is best to check the actual size of the crates. If I had turned up in my car there was no-way I would have been able to drive them home and having them share a crate from Napier to Taupo was sooo not an option. Sons cat has issues about not being a pedigree I think and sometimes behaves a wee bit chavvy.

[frootbat]

Just picking up on one or two things people have mentioned, the wooden boxes are large, for cats they are definitely bigger than the plastic cat carriers you get. Our dogs didn't get let out until three hours after they had landed but I think that was probably down to the individual inspector. We had expected that to happen but we do have a large dog and he said he would not be able to get him back in the box again! There was also a delay due to Air NZ not sending over the original documentation. But all is well in the end.

I'm quite surprised they managed to get ours back in, she's normally bouncy, but after 24 hours cooped up, well you can well imagine - but they did! I guess she was lucky, maybe the only one on her flight.

Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with your crates, build an extension?

[moses]

Just out of curiosity, what are you going to do with your crates, build an extension?

ROFLMAO They do send them over in rather huge crates.

[girlwithanewf]

Well, at the moment we are living in a rented place with two airbeds and three camping chairs until our stuff arrives mid april, so the cat crate is doing service as a small table (covered with a tablecloth, got to maintain some standards) and when the dog crates arrive (they got picked up by a courier company called go-fetch who were very reasonably priced) they will hopefully become a table to eat off...