Meet the two most opinionated parts of the move
Ella
English Springer Spaniel
Ella is our “failed” police dog. Not because she lacked personality. Quite the opposite. Being a working dog was apparently beneath her. She wanted to play, investigate on her own terms and negotiate the job description.
Kali
Brittany Spaniel · rescue from Spain
Kali joined us from Spain and has settled into family life with suspicious confidence. She is also, apparently, a husband thief, which feels like the sort of detail that belongs in the official relocation paperwork.
Why this matters
Pet relocation has its own timeline, costs, paperwork, health checks, travel decisions and emotional load. It changes how we think about flights, houses, weather, routines, gardens, roads, vets and what “settled” means on the other side.
Ella and Kali do not know what “we’re moving to Goa” means. They know routines, smells, walks, food, heat, noise and whether their humans seem calm or suspiciously interested in crates. The move has to work for them too, not just for us.
The early list
Vet timelines, vaccinations, paperwork, export and import requirements, crates, crate training, flight options, airline rules, heat, hydration, arrival routines, finding vets in Goa, safe outdoor space and parasite protection.
Some of this we understand. Some of it we still need to confirm. We’ll keep those two categories separate, especially because Ella and Kali are not generic “pets”. They are two dogs with their own habits, histories and opinions.
What comes next
We are not going to write an “ultimate guide” before we have gone through the process. Requirements change, routes differ, dogs are different and bad information can be expensive.
What we can do is document our timeline, decisions, mistakes, questions and what we learn from vets and professionals along the way, with Ella and Kali as actual characters in the story rather than anonymous travel complications.