Why to NOT own a dog as an expat

For people that are familiar with my work and life this might seem an unlikely topic for me to approach in this way because if you know me, you know that my dog is basically the biggest part of my life and almost all of what I do evolves around her.

Nadi (my dog) is my heart, she is the reason why I do most of the things that I do in my day and I really enjoy the fact that she is in my life. I know that I am a lot happier because of her existence in my day-to-day life and I am going to be very sad when she is eventually gone. So why would I say that having a dog as an expat is a bad idea? Well that is because as much as I love her, she has definitely made my life a lot more complicated than it would be if she were not in it.

I have no regrets of course and I would never wish her out of my life. It's quite the opposite actually: I go out of my way to provide for her and sometimes i feel like a single mom or something because virtually everything I do including where I decide to live has everything to do with her and actually a lot more so than I consider how I am going to feel about a place that I go.

People don't want to rent to pets

This is one of the biggest hurdles with a dog and one that I can relate to because at one point in time I actually owned rental properties. Despite my love for animals I had a strict "no pets" policy at the properties that I owned and managed. It didn't matter to me if we were talking about a German Shepherd or a Chihuahua, it didn't factor in to my own decision about whether or not it would be allowed. Sure, I KNOW that my dog doesn't chew up things, poop on the floor, bark all damn day long, or really do anything that would annoy most neighbors, but there is no reason for a landlord to know or believe that when I tell it to them.

When I have moved to my last 2 cities that I lived in I was limited to around 1/4 of the overall available rentals because even though the houses, condos, and bungalows definitely wanted to rent the place, they were not willing to take a chance on the animal. Also, places that do allow animals tend to be run down and filled with other pet owners whose dogs are NOT well behaved.

Transporting a dog is more difficult than transporting a person

_{that fact that she hates traveling like this is also a consideration}

I have had to transport Nadi by air 3 times in her life. On all of those occasions it was dramatically more difficult to transport her than it was to transport me. There is documentation that you have to get from vets and government agencies just to be allowed to do it and then once you do have the paperwork there are only certain airlines that will even allow it. Then you have the added bonus of not really knowing how your dog is going to be treated once it is out of your sight. On one flight I arrived at the baggage pickup to find that they had stowed her crate outside in the heat with no water for hours before I was able to get her. She could have died and nobody seemed to care.

Most places I've been are not very safe for pets

As much as I love having a dog, the places that I have lived have had many dangers that my home country would not have had. In Thailand, you always had to be concerned about roving packs of semi-feral dogs getting a hold of your domesticated dog in which case she wouldn't stand a chance. In Vietnam the environment is very dangerous because of the rather crazy roads here and since even the sidewalks are part of the road. I have to be on my toes anytime I take her for a walk because cars, trucks, motorbikes.... they are not going to accommodate your animal's lack of street-smarts.

It's expensive

I'm reasonably successful so this isn't a huge factor for me but there are a lot of people that I have met that got a dog, then realized that when they were going to transport it that it isn't as simple as just wanting to get on a plane with a dog... It costs a LOT of money to transport an animal and there are even situations I have heard about where customs try to shake people down for bribes, threatening to not give the animal back if you do not pay.

If you have a stable job and the ability to stay in a foreign country for long periods of time this is all fine and dandy but people need to remember that just because things are going well for you now (even in my own life) it doesn't necessarily mean that they are going to stay that way for another 15 years, which is about how long a dog is going to live if you are lucky.

For a lot of people, I think they jump into pet ownership because they only see the good side of things such as the fact that my dog is cute and well-behaved. They don't see the troubles that come along with that such as the fact that if I wanted to move to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, or really anywhere else I could do so easily if it was just me. Introduce a dog into the situation and now there are multiple agents, government agencies, veterinarians, and special offices you have to go to that the airline owns before you ever depart.

It seriously complicates your life is what I am trying to say.

So if you find yourself living abroad and thinking of adopting a dog I commend you because there are so many dogs in the world that need this sort of help. The problem is that the process and your life after the fact is going to be a lot more complicated than it was before. So just be careful and make sure to think about this before you take the plunge. It can be a very rewarding one but I do know this about my own life before I had Nadi: I was more adventurous and moved around and did a lot more things. Now I can't really do these things so I realize that it was a tradeoff, one that I would gladly do again.