This next post fleshes out what will happen when you arrive with your imported puppy or dog to the island of Oahu, Hawaii. I cannot speak on what will happen if you plan to import to any of the outer islands. But I am happy to search for someone who might be able to do a guest post on what that experience might be like.
In my personal opinion, landing and what happens thereafter was the most difficult part of this experience for me. If getting yourself and your pup to Oahu wasn’t already involved enough, take a deep breath because this is where it really gets intense. You know how it sometimes has to get worse before it gets better? That’s this part of the process. Here’s how it went down, for us.
My first advice is that you need to prepare you. A lot of your attention thus far has probably been on the puppy. Do they have everything they need? Are they cozy and settled? Have they snoozed their way through the flight? Are they hungry/thirsty? Your focus has probably not been on yourself really at all. Just getting through flights without a pet can already be rigorous enough as it is. But the next hour of your life after that plane lands is going to be demanding.
That being said, I strongly, strongly recommend that you spend the last 20 to 30 minutes of your flight preparing yourself, your puppy’s human. You need to use the bathroom, you need to drink water, stretch a little bit, especially your arms, and then shed your layers and slather yourself with sunscreen.
You are going to be in the airport and waiting outside in the hot sun for about a solid hour doing puppy things and carrying your puppy in his crate throughout the airport. You may also want to make sure you have an umbrella easily within reach in case you’re standing outside in the rain, not the sun. Ya never know what it’s gonna be here in Hawai’i nei. So you need to check back in with you, and make sure you’re solid right before the plane lands.
When you arrive at the airport (when the plane is parked and your flight is over), the first thing that’s going to happen is that everyone except the people with pets is going to be invited to deplane. You will have to wait until all the passengers sans animals are offloaded. During this time, I highly, highly recommend that you sneakily throw a pee pad in the crate and let the dog relieve itself, then remove the pee pad. Give your dog a nice drink of water. I most assure you that most animals do need to pee after their five-hour trans-pacific flight. On my flight, there was an Akita service dog. And sure enough, as we were going through the airport doing this process, the Akita peed a huge puddle in the middle of the airport floor. Luckily for them, I had extra pee pads in my backpack and offered them a pee pad to absorb the urine puddle off the floor. But seriously, Hawaii/ HNL airport, you guys do need to come up with ways to let all animals relieve themselves as soon as they land, even if it’s on a pee pad. And even if those pets are destined for quarantine, there should be some sort of animal potty system for planes, idk. Hire Temple Grandin to consult for you or something?
If the flight staff is kind and understanding, they will let you hold your puppy and cuddle with it in the plane before you have to deplane. At this point I was already starting to freak out, because me and Nalu puppy had literally never separated from each other whatsoever since I had gone to pick him up from the breeder three weeks prior. And I was already beginning to imagine that scary animal officers were going to rip the puppy’s crate out of my arms the moment my foot touched the passenger boarding bridge. That’s not what actually goes down, but here’s where the hardest, most confusing part of all of this begins.
You will be required to zip tie your little love bug into their crate in order to leave the plane. This is how they ensure that rabid animals don’t escape the quarantine system. And they will have to remain ziptie-locked into their crates until they are either released back to you, or transported to the Halawa Valley Animal quarantine facility. This whole entire process from zip-tie to release can take a minimum of an hour.
Next, after our pets were all zip-tied in and role-called from a list of animals aboard the flight , they made us all fill out paperwork (this may have been COVID-specific and I cannot guarantee this paperwork leg of the process will still be in effect beyond 2021). Then we had to travel through the underbelly of the airport (noteworthy detail: at this point all social distancing was out the window. They had us crowded in this mystery elevator, Willy Wonka style, as we descended to the airport animal quarantine holding facility. How this was meant to protect anyone from COVID is truly beyond me).
Then, you have to go to this metal door-clad small room kinda area, which is the lobby to the animal holding facility. This is where they take your animals from you. A stranger will bring them through another metal door where the quarantine facility staff does whatever it is they do behind said door. They take the dog from you so quickly you don’t even have time to say anything to your puppy. At this point my cortisol levels were sky high; and I was near-frantically begging the staff to please let him out to pee and to please give him some water.
Meanwhile, everyone is asked to wait outside the metal door to the lobby, where they call people’s names at random who are eligible for Direct Airport Release. No one understands the rhyme, reason, or logic behind the order in which names are called and dogs are checked over. Some of us felt like we were waiting outside that metal door for an eternity, deliberately being ignored. No one would tell us what was happening, or how long we could expect to be standing out there, waiting.
We were basically lightweight yelled at and told to just wait our turn. We even became concerned that the place was closing, and leaving us hanging because people started to mop up like they were getting ready to shut it down for the day. But we hadn’t been told anything. We were just standing out there, waiting, anxious, and ‘in the dark’ about the process, clueless as to what’s going on.
Among your group of animal import comrades will be the ‘Direct Airport Release’ people, and then there is ‘everyone else’. In my case, I was the only ‘everyone else’. So I was clueless AF about what the hell was happening to my puppy. I thought I would be the first one called back. Like “Hello miss, your puppy is in and they will take him to Halawa at 3pm. You can go get your luggage now”. Yeah no. Instead I was the last person informed as to what was going on. It was more like a “uh… what about us?” situation. And by then it was so late that not only did Nalu end up having to spend the night at the airport holding facility possibly all by his little baby dog self (with no other dogs present), but my luggage had to be picked up at some special pick-up desk all the way across the airport where your luggage ends up when it gets left on the carousel unclaimed.
Luckily for me there was this sweet older couple who was importing their cats; and their process took so long that they too had to go to the special luggage pick-up place. So the three of us were able to walk all the way back across the airport together. Once we had our luggage, we could finally go home.
In the event that your dog has to spend the night at the airport holding facility, I strongly encourage you to call/email/ harass whoever needs to be harassed to get a confirmation that your puppy has been safely transported and delivered to their kennel at the Halawa animal facility. Doing this brought me immense peace of mind because for my experience, I was COVID-forced to be in my own 2-week post-travel quarantine at my house upon arrival.
That being said, if for whatever reason, like me, you are unable to personally and immediately go visit your puppy when you arrive to the island, I strongly suggest you appoint a surrogate visitor in your place to ensure that your puppy is OK, and reassure them. In order to appoint another visitor that isn’t you, you will need to give the Halawa Animal Quarantine the visitor’s name, driver’s license number, and possibly address. I would try to pick a friend or family member who can be a consistent visitor to your puppy until you are able to visit on your own.
When my friend went to visit in my place he faceTime’d me to prove that my puppy was adjusted, safe, and happy. I cannot express to you how much emotional relief this brought me. I was basically an anxious wreck from the moment I handed Nalu to the stranger at the metal door, until my friend faceTime’d me. Technically the rules state that you are not allowed to take photographs or videos from within the animal quarantine station because it is considered government property. But given the circumstances and the fact that it’s 2021, I needed to know that my puppy was safe and OK.
If they aren’t going to allow staff to send owners arrival verification photos, obviously we are going to send in visitors and have our visitors show us that our puppy is OK. Everyone is bringing their phones into the facility. Everyone is taking calls and photos, and watching movies on their phones while they chill with their animals. So I most assure you this photo/video policy is most definitely being broken. And my friend who did it no longer lives in Hawaii anyway. So, sorry not sorry.
Even tho my friend may have legitimately broken the law to reassure me that my puppy was safe, it would really behoove the animal quarantine facility to start releasing more photographs of animals in quarantine so that it brings more pet owners more peace of mind.
The Halawa Valley Animal Quarantine Facility really is a safe place for your pet. If all animal boarding facilities resembled theirs, I would be perfectly happy leaving my pet there during a time of need. It really is not a bad setup at all once you understand the road that you’re on in your mandatory pet quarantine journey. In fact, I might even say that Hawaiian-quarantined animals are lucky that they have access to the outdoors, fresh air, and sunshine in our beautiful island climate, instead of being quarantined indoors among all their own excrement. The only time this might make me worried is in the event of a hurricane, in which case I’d be freaking the eff out that the facility was an outdoors facility. Otherwise, I’d prefer an open-air setup.
But I’ll describe what the actual facility is like in my next post.
puppy & paradise 