Moving a Dog or Cat to Canada

The quarantine exemption in CFIA’s document is written for pet dogs, and the part covering domestic cats requires a certificate while staying silent on quarantine. The rabies certificate must be in a language CFIA accepts, set out below, identify your pet, and be signed by a licensed veterinarian. A mismatch can mean re vaccination orders or refused entry, which is exactly what our document check prevents.

Before booking anything, we confirm what applies to your pet directly against the CFIA import reference rules, so nothing in your plan is based on outdated summaries.

Canada asks for the same rabies certificate whatever the country of departure. On the US side, APHIS’s page for pets travelling from the US to Canada, modified 30 July 2025 and read 9 November 2026, says pet cats and pet dogs older than eight months need no health certificate: proof of rabies vaccination from a licensed veterinarian is enough, given within three years of arriving in Canada. For those pets there is no USDA endorsement to wait for.

Younger dogs are where the US move needs more care. APHIS says one or two dogs under eight months travelling with their owner can travel on proof of current rabies vaccination alone (CFIA asks for none below three months), while CFIA’s document gives a young dog travelling without its owner the extra examination certificate and the 72 hour window set out above. A puppy under eight months bought in the US to be sold or adopted out in Canada is a commercial import, covered in the next section.

By road, the pet is declared with you at the crossing. The Canada Border Services Agency’s travelling with animals page, modified 27 June 2024 and read 9 November 2026, says its officers can turn an animal away, seize it or hold it when the certificates it needs are missing, so keep the certificate where you can hand it over. Our US site’s guide to driving a dog across the border covers the drive itself. We can plan the whole move from your US door, or only the arrival end in Canada.

Beyond the certificate, moving to Canada with a pet turns on four things: whether CFIA counts the animal as a pet, how it is booked onto the flight, how it is collected when it lands, and whether its breed may enter the province it is going to.

CFIA’s travelling with a pet page, read 15 September 2026, says only dogs, cats and ferrets qualify as pets, and that its import requirements cover an animal entering Canada permanently as much as one visiting. Its dog travel page, read 16 September 2026, adds that what a dog needs depends on the country it comes from, its age, the purpose of the import and whether it travels with its owner. The Import Reference Document also sets a commercial puppy under eight months outside its section on dogs, admitting one only under paragraph 12(1)(a) of the Health of Animals Regulations, so a family pet and a puppy imported commercially follow different rules.

How the pet flies decides who can book it. In the cabin or as checked baggage it travels on your own reservation, while Air Canada Cargo’s before you book page for dogs and cats, read 15 September 2026, requires a registered IPATA, IATA or ATA agent for a cargo booking on its international and US routes. Our guide to flying with a pet from Canada sets out the cabin, checked baggage and cargo rules of each airline in full.

At the airport, a pet that flew in the cabin or in checked baggage lands with you, while a shipment is collected from the airline’s freight side, a step that falls to the agent on those Air Canada bookings. The rabies certificate is checked either way, and the border inspection fee, with who collects it, is on the cost page linked above.

Then the province. WestJet’s pets page, read 15 September 2026, lists the Pit Bull Terrier, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier and Staffordshire Bull Terrier as restricted for travel into or through Ontario, which reaches a connection at Toronto Pearson as well as a move into the province itself. Our guide to banned and restricted dog breeds by country sets out Ontario’s own statute.