Your dog is legal where you live. Australia can still refuse it

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The answer

Two governments, two lists, and they are not the same list. Owning a dog legally where you live now tells you nothing about whether Australia will admit it — and the mismatch runs in both directions.

Australia additionally refuses four wolfdog hybrids — Czechoslovakian wolfdog, Saarloos wolfdog, Lupo Italiano and Kunming wolfdog — which are not part of Britain’s ban at all.

The expensive direction: legal at home, refused by Australia

This is the one that costs people a year and thousands of pounds.

A Perro de Presa Canario is a dog you may lawfully own in Britain. There is no exemption process to go through, no certificate to hold, nothing to suggest a problem. And Australia will not import it.

The damage is in the sequencing. The Australian pathway takes roughly a year, and almost all of the cost lands early: the microchip, the rabies vaccination, the identity check, the titre test, then a 180-day wait before travel is even possible. An owner who assumes “my dog is legal, so my dog can come” can complete most of that before anyone tells them otherwise.

Check the breed question first. It is the cheapest question in the entire process and the only one that can invalidate everything after it.

The other direction: banned at home, not on Australia’s list

The XL Bully is banned in the United Kingdom but does not appear on Australia’s published list of prohibited breeds.

Do not read that as a route. Two things get in the way:

• Britain’s ban restricts what you may do with the dog. It is against the law to sell, give away, abandon or breed from a banned dog. A dog kept under a Certificate of Exemption is being kept by permission, under conditions.
• Australia’s list is not promised to be exhaustive. The department’s wording is that prohibited breeds include those named — so absence from the list is not the same as approval.

If your dog is a British banned type, this is a question for the authorities on both ends before you spend anything.

Both countries judge the dog, not the paperwork

The two systems disagree about which dogs are banned, but they agree about how a dog is judged, and it is the part owners find hardest to accept. Britain puts it plainly:

Whether your dog is a banned type depends on what it looks like, rather than its breed or name. For example, if your dog matches many of the characteristics of a Pit Bull Terrier, it may be a banned type.

Australia works the same way at the border: a dog can be investigated after arrival as possibly being a prohibited breed, and earlier import approval is not a determination that it is not one.

The practical consequence for a mixed-breed dog that resembles a banned type is that neither its registration papers nor a DNA test settles the matter. An official does, by looking. If your dog is anywhere near that line, get it assessed before you begin — not at the airport.

The United States and Canada

Neither is covered here, and the reason is honest rather than tidy: the relevant sources have not been read.

Neither country has a single national breed ban of the British kind. The restrictions that exist are state, provincial and municipal, they vary widely, and they govern ownership where you live rather than export. What matters for the move is unchanged and is already documented: Australia’s import ban applies identically whichever of the three countries you leave from.

What this page does not tell you

• Whether your dog is one of these types. Nothing on this site can make that call. It rests on an official’s assessment of the animal.
• United States or Canadian breed restrictions, at any level of government.
• How to obtain or transfer a Certificate of Exemption, or whether an exempted dog may be exported at all — ask Defra and the Australian department before assuming either.
• Australian state and territory breed law, which is a separate regime from the import ban — see after-arrival state rules.
• Cat restrictions, which are a different list with a different authority.