Starting 6, 9 or 12 months out: what each buys you

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The three scenarios

Why six months is the floor, not the plan

The department advises allowing at least six months. That is the length of the 180-day wait alone — and the wait does not start until the microchip, the identity check, the vaccination and the blood draw are already done.

Stack the minimums:

• identity check → separate visit → RNATT blood (3–4 weeks after a primary vaccination course);
• 180 days from the sample reaching the laboratory;
• import permit: usually 20–40 business days, but up to 123;
• quarantine booking, parasite treatments, final examination, endorsement.

Six months of wait plus a month of preparation plus a permit that can take six months of business days does not fit in six calendar months. It fits in nine, comfortably in twelve.

What each starting point actually buys

Twelve months. Everything is possible, including things that go wrong. There is room for a booster that falls awkwardly, a laboratory that misrecords a microchip number, a permit that takes the long path. This is also the only starting point where a puppy or kitten works easily: the rabies vaccine counts only from 84 days of age, so a young animal is roughly nine to ten months old before it can fly.

Nine months. The normal case. Enough room for the sequence and for one setback, not two. The pressure point is the permit — apply as soon as the rabies work is complete rather than when you start thinking about flights.

Six months. The 180-day wait consumes the whole window, which means every step before it has to have happened already. In practice, someone at six months is usually choosing between 30 days’ quarantine — skipping the identity check to get the blood drawn immediately — and moving without the animal and bringing it later. Both are legitimate. Pretending the timeline fits is not.

The two clocks that also close

Starting early is not risk-free in one specific way: the RNATT expires 12 months from the blood sample date, and the import permit is valid only until the RNATT expires — and it must still be valid on the day your pet arrives.

So the usable window is day 180 to day 365 after the sample. Start absurdly early and the test can expire before you travel. You can renew without losing the wait, but only if the new sample arrives at the laboratory within 12 months of the original.

Why the last three months cannot absorb a delay

Late in the process the deadlines stop being sequential and start overlapping:

• external parasite treatment from at least 30 days before export for a dog, 21 days for a cat, staying effective throughout — possibly needing re-treatment on the product’s interval;
• internal parasite treatment twice within 45 days, at least 14 days apart, the second within 5 days of export;
• the pre-export clinical examination;
• for an unvaccinated dog leaving Canada, ten days’ isolation, a PCR within 7 days, and an examination within 48 hours of departure.

A flight that moves by a week invalidates several of those at once. The slack has to exist earlier in the plan, because the final fortnight has none to give.

The one date to fix first

Not your moving date. The date the RNATT sample reaches the laboratory. It determines your earliest export, the test’s expiry, the permit’s validity and therefore your arrival window. Everything else is scheduling around it, and every honest plan is built forwards from it rather than backwards from a flight.