He Goes Where We Go

Now, we were on the ground, waiting to reunite with Rolo. One staff member pointed us to the left, and another asked us to go downstairs, only to be told by a third that staff alone could go there. Another asked us to wait at a particular spot so we would see him when they brought him out. The minutes kept stacking up. Vin and I looked for anyone with the authority for help. We had no idea how the flight had been for him. Mostly I was afraid of what he was going through, alone somewhere in that building, while we tried to reach him.

A long while later, in the middle of a packed baggage claim, a representative brought along Rolo's crate. I held my breath until I saw him alive and well, trying to get to us. There he was wagging his tail, and every bit of the exhaustion and pain fell away. Vin and I dropped to our knees on the airport floor and cut open the twist ties to open the door to his crate. He whined, soft and low, and fell into us. He was bouncing and so happy, and we were so relieved that for a second nothing else in the world existed.

Then he made it very clear he needed to pee, and that was when it landed: the airline was supposed to let him out for a break at the layover, but the twist ties were exactly where they had been in Newark. They were supposed to feed him from the bag we had taped to the top of his crate, but it sat there untouched. He had held it across an ocean and a layover, because nobody had opened the door. We were furious, but it was best for us to remain calm for Rolo. We rushed him out, only to be called back in to take care of the formalities they had missed earlier, which took another twenty minutes.

Those two hours are what I remember most, but the months before them taught me more.

When Vin and I were weighing the move back to India, the forms and the flights turned out to be the manageable part. The hard part was that we were choosing for someone who could not be asked.

Everyone else in a move like this gets a say. The pet just trusts you, and gets in the crate.

This is for anyone who wants to bring their pet with them, or is already in the middle of doing it. It's also for the version of me who sat up at night looking for an honest account and finding only horror stories and half-answers scattered across forums.

If that's you, I hope this makes the road feel shorter.

Before I tell you more about his journey, let me tell you a little about Rolo.

Rolo is a brown flat-coated Double Doodle. He was about twenty months old when we moved, already a big dog with a puppy's heart.

He plays a game we call circles. He weaves through your legs, out the back, turns, and comes around again, stitching figure eights around your knees until you're laughing too hard to walk. He runs from person to person across the house, a habit left over from a game we played with him as a puppy, checking that everyone is still there, still his.

Not everyone would make the same call about bringing a dog, and that's fair. For us there was never a version of our move where he stayed behind. We were determined to bring him along with us, in the safest way possible.

That is the dog we put in a crate and sent into the sky. We had chosen India before he ever knew there was a choice being made. We both got a vote. He didn't. He simply trusted us to decide for him.

Moving a dog across borders isn't about checking off one massive list. It's a long chain of small tasks, each one holding only if the one before it held.

One missed deadline, one wrong courier, one outdated form, and weeks of work can come apart in your hands.

The first question most people don't know to ask: which path are you on? We brought Rolo as accompanied baggage, which meant qualifying for Transfer of Residence by proving we'd lived abroad without a break for two years. We had. If you haven't, your route is different, usually with an extra license attached. Breed restrictions are also real, both on India's own import list and in each airline's policy, so I checked both, even though neither applied to Rolo.

We split the paperwork by geography. The American side we handled ourselves, since a vet or a post office was never more than an hour away. For the Indian end we hired an agency, because chasing government offices from eight thousand miles out is its own particular madness. They handled the NOC, the clearance India issues to let a pet in, which had to be ready about a week before we landed.

What kept me on edge was the timing, because every step had a deadline that leaned on the one before it. A rabies shot inside the right window. A microchip that a scanner briefly couldn't read until a nurse tried a different device. A health certificate from an accredited vet that had to be endorsed by the government, mailed back to us, and shared with the Indian authorities, all within ten days of takeoff.

The closest call was my own doing. Days before we flew, I remembered I'd filed a change of address for the move, and that Rolo's endorsed certificate, already in the mail back to us, could follow that instruction straight to the wrong house. I canceled it in time. Two careful errands, run in parallel, had nearly collided. That's the thing about a move this size: the pieces don't know about each other. You're the only one who can introduce them.

We would have flown non-stop if we could. We couldn't, because past a certain number of hours a pet isn't allowed to stay in the air in one unbroken stretch, so the layover was required. Everything about the route bent around that, and around finding an airline that would take Rolo's XXXL crate in a temperature-controlled hold.

Every vet said the same thing about sedation: don't. It puts a pet's heart at risk in the air. So we prepared instead of medicating. We bought the IATA travel crate months early so it would become his home. We taught him to sip from the water bottle that clips to the door, and on the morning of the flight gave him a little food and a lot of exercise, so he'd go in tired and calm. He did. At the airport in Newark, when we walked him into the crate and said goodbye, he went in calmly, a little puzzled, maybe, by a crate that rolled. But he'd learned something across his whole life with us that no form could teach him: that when we left, we always came back for him.

I clipped a tracker to his crate and watched him move across the map. I wouldn't board either leg until the crew confirmed he was loaded below, and at the layover I refused to take my seat until I knew for certain, which delayed the flight, and which I'd do again tomorrow. None of it stopped his crate from staying shut through the whole layover. You can do every last thing right and still not shield them from someone else's carelessness.

A pet does not get to weigh the trade-offs himself, so it fell to us to be honest about what the move would take from him.

In the US, he had a life that suited him. The community we lived in had a dedicated dog park, and he went three to five times a day. Off leash, on his own schedule, sniffing whatever he wanted for as long as he wanted.

His sister, same parents and a different litter, lived close enough to play ball with him daily. The park always had other dogs in it, and nearly everyone we met there, dog or person, was friendly to him.

Above all, he loved the seasonal rhythm of the outdoors: fall, when the ground was covered in crunchy leaves, and rain he refused to come inside from. Snow most of all. He was a different creature in snow, shoving his face through it and biting at it. He'd chase us across the park until we were the ones who wanted to go home.

The best part was how little of it required planning. The door opened and the day was his. What he lost wasn't any one thing. It was the ease of it: the freedom to just be a dog outside, without us reading the room first.

What he got instead is a bigger family.

Here, we chose where to live by asking what he'd need: a safe home, a clean place to walk, a vet close by, cleaner air, and reliable indoor cooling, which for a double-coated dog is a necessity.

Then there are the people. Vin and I both work from home now, so he has both of us all day, more of us than he's ever had. Our families invite us over, or call us, just to see him. Kids across the community know him, and when the little ones get him going, he runs circles around their legs until the whole room is laughing.

He's grown up here, still playful but calmer and more watchful. He's picked up new tricks, mostly from the children, and a whole vocabulary for telling us what he wants.

A few months after we arrived, my family lost our Labrador, and Rolo, steady and warm and present, helped all of us through the grief.

He went from a dog with his own dog park to a dog at the center of people who treat him as one of their own. I didn't know how much that would matter.

Before the move, what kept me up was everything he stood to lose: the space, the freedom, the easy outdoor life. I was counting what a place gives a dog. He counts his people, and whether they're there.

The move ends. The adjusting doesn't.

We learned this the hard way. Early on, Rolo tore up his paw pads running on paver blocks in a parking lot, which meant more than a month of daily treatment. Then came the skin problems, stubborn patches that ignored every cream and medicine we tried until an allergy test finally named the culprit: dust mites, thriving both indoors and out. I'm still on the hunt for a kind way to tackle his allergies.

The street dogs took some getting used to. Rolo had always seen another dog and thought play, so the first time he met the neighborhood strays he was thrilled. They weren't. For a few days it was all growling and barking at him, and we could see him not understanding why. Then he got the hang of it, and now he barks right back.

Looking at him now, you'd never know it was once a struggle. It took time and a lot of trial and error, and what started as a nerve-wracking transition is now just our everyday life. He is home.

Your pet isn't Rolo, and your experience won't look exactly like ours. Bringing a dog to India isn't the right call for every animal.

Start with the physical facts. How a pet flies comes down to size. Small ones can often ride in the cabin at your feet. Large dogs, Rolo included, travel below in the hold for the whole journey. Airlines set their own weight limits, so the threshold isn't universal. Snub-nosed breeds face real danger in cargo, and many airlines won't carry them in the hold at all. An older or medically fragile pet may find an international flight more than it can manage.

Then there is temperament. Rolo walked into that crate calmly because he trusted we would come back for him. A dog who comes apart when the routine shifts, or who struggles to be left alone, may find the flight, and then the noise and crowds of an Indian city, far harder to bear. Last, look honestly at where you'll be living. Most neighborhoods here have nothing like the off-leash park Rolo went to multiple times a day, and the traffic changes what a walk even is.

Be honest with yourself about all of it, and answer for them rather than for yourself.

What I wish I had known

If you decide to move with your pet, here's the shortest version of what I wish someone had told me.

Start with your dog, and only then with the logistics. Work out which legal path you are on before you spend anything. Get someone on the ground in India to handle the NOC. And ask every question twice, without embarrassment, including whether your dog is actually on the plane before you take your seat.

Yes, without a doubt. For us, for our dog, and our circumstances.

Bringing Rolo was what love looked like for Vin and me. He was strong and healthy and ours to the bone, and the flight, hard as it was, was something his body could take. So we took it, together.

If you're reading this facing the opposite decision, because your dog is old, or unwell, or a breed that can't fly safely, or because the life you can offer here isn't the life he needs, then choosing not to bring him can be love too. Leaving him somewhere he'll thrive, or sparing him a journey he can't handle, is putting him first, which is the only thing any of this was ever about.

Our love put Rolo on a plane. Someone else's love keeps a dog home. We're doing the same thing, just arriving at different answers. He is at my feet now, exactly where he wants to be. Whatever you decide, I hope your dog ends up exactly where he should be too.

In honest company, and with a sleeping Rolo by my feet,
Shruti