NI woman welcomes end to protocol's 'excessive medication' around travelling with pets

Tracy Kane-Corbett from Fivemiletown had previously spoken out about the strict EU requirements on taking pets to Great Britain and back as part of the NI Protocol, which required all pets to have a passport, be vaccinated against rabies, and be wormed before every journey.

Tracy and her family have a total of 11 dogs and are passionate about dog trials, competing eight of their dogs, including English Springer Spaniels, Labradors and Spanish Waterdogs, at competitions in GB four times a year. Her teenage son Christopher is a top international competitor.

When the rules were introduced Tracy accused the EU of ‘malice’ in imposing rabies vaccinations for pets, noting the disease is only present in Europe.

She was also concerned about the risk to dogs’ health through ‘excessive medication’, particularly from worming dogs too often, claiming it affected a dog’s immunity and left them susceptible to tapeworm infection.

However, as part of the new Windsor Framework announced by Rishi Sunak this week, travellers with pets have been assured that under the agreement, they can now travel throughout the UK without the requirement of extra health treatments, new costs or extra documents.

Tracy, who is originally from Scotland, said: “We shouldn’t be penalised just because we live in Northern Ireland, which was what was happening. It was costing a fortune to take your dogs across the water and you were having to give them unnecessary injections.

"We refused to go down the route of passports. Because we travel from Belfast to Cairnryan you still needed to have a vet certificate for your dogs and that meant they all had to be up-to-date with their vaccinations, they had to be mirco-chipped and it was up to yourself whether you gave the rabies shot or not and we refused point blank. But you still had to have your certification. You could have been paying up to £200 per dog. It was the same amount of money as someone just going with their pet.”

She added: "It was just ridiculous as we would normally travel three or four times a year, so I would go home quite a lot to Scotland as well – and it meant we just couldn’t. We couldn’t afford to do it.

"We travel with a big dog trailer so we are automatically stopped. We don’t complain about that, because it cuts down on puppy trafficking. We had no problem doing all the paperwork, that has never an issue with us, it was just all the unnecessary injections and everything.”

"We were being penalised to go across the water to Britain, but the ones from southern Ireland, which is another country, were coming into the north, didn’t have to do a thing with their dogs. A trip was costing us around £1,000,” she added.