So now that I’ve walked you through the humbug but worthwhile process of how to get your dog onto this island, $12K+ later, let’s talk about the other dirty secret part of flying your dog to Hawaii: the FAVN rabies blood test.
OK so in a nutshell, here’s everything you should know about the FAVN (rabies titers) dog blood test:
- it is a blood test designed to measure the level of rabies vaccine present in your dog’s system. It is NOT a test for whether or not they have rabies.
- There are only two (2), Elua, dos facilities in the entire USA that process these blood tests. And what do you know, zero of them are located on the island of Hawai’i even though Hawai’i is probably the USA’s number one customer need for this (wack) test.
- The facilities are located in middle America (Kansas, and somewhere else).
- This test is required if you want to import your dog from mainland USA into Hawai’i, or else your animal will be put under a non-negotiable mandatory rabies quarantine.
- If your dog is already in the quarantine facility, you have the option of getting the required rabies vaccines, waiting 14 days or so, and then having the FAVN blood test performed in order to get your pup outta dog jail 30 days sooner than the full 120 days. But this comes at an extra cost, and even if you already paid $1200 for the 120-day animal quarantine, you will NOT be reimbursed or prorated for any of the days your animal no longer needs to spend in quarantine should they test out.
- If you want to do this blood test, and your dog is already in quarantine, you have to select quarantine-approved veterinarians who perform the FAVN test.
- All of them on this island will be charging you a minimum of $400+ as of 2020 for the FAVN test. When I got mine done, it cost us $625 at the end of 2021 from my main vet who I won’t name here because it’s gonna make you guys look like money-hungry assholes, even though I love the work you guys do on everything else.
- The FAVN test results are good for 3 years.
- At this point, most people who have young puppies in the 120-day Hawaii state-mandated quarantine program think to ourselves “well shit, I already paid $1200 I’m not getting back to have my puppy in this quarantine facility. So why would I spend $400+ more just to get them home 30 days sooner? That’s enough money to literally buy a whole new dog. That’s like paying a month’s worth of doggie quarantine “rent” and then leaving the rental unoccupied. Can I really be throwing away money all like that??”. And almost all the new puppy quarantine dog parents agree, no, it’s not worth the extra money flying out of our bank accounts. We already made it so far, we can white knuckle our way through 30 more days of visits.
- BUT HERE’S THE THING… If you already know you plan on traveling back to the mainland within the next three years and prefer to bring your dog along, you must have a negative FAVN blood test on file with the Hawaii Dept of Ag. So that alone dictates that it is worth the. few extra hundred dollars to bring your dog home early. And nobody ever told me this.
- My dog is my emotional support animal who performs essential functions to keep my anxiety attacks at bay. So there was literally a day when my phobia was coming true for hours, and the anxiety was literally impacting my ability to work from home and be in my apartment. The dog could have been at home helping me with the trigger of said phobia, except the dog was trapped in animal quarantine. To discover that that day never needed to happen because I could have gotten that stupid blood test and taken the dog home early left me pretty pissed. No one at HDOA even thought to ask me “Do you have any intentions to travel back and forth between the mainland and Hawaii within the next three years while bringing the dog with you?”…. “yes? OK well then you might as well get this test now because it will be required over the next three years regardless if you want to travel with your dog, and you’ll be able to take your puppy home early, especially if it’s your ESA”. 🤷🏽♀️
- While we are over here paying $400-625 for this blood test, people in the mainland only have to pay $200 to $300. Y’all do realize th
- Online, the Kansas testing facility who offers the FAVN claim that it only costs $90. So how in the hell is it costing Hawaiian residents $625?
- Oh by the way– a lot of dogs fail the FAVN blood test and their dog’s blood doesn’t demonstrate high enough traces of the vaccine the first go-round most of the time. So a lot of dogs need a re-test after a rabies booster shot..
- Your test results are only good for 3 years and then you need a rabies booster shot and have to pay for this test all over again.
- If you are relocating for military careers, no, the military does not cover the cost of your animal import fees unless that animal is a documented service dog that needs to immediately go with you or a member of your family, possibly. Don’t quote me on service dog counting in the eyes of the military.
Here’s the thing about the cost of this test, and the details of why this extremely expensive requirement is so absurd from the end of locals who live here…
Firstly, in my specific case, and in the case of many puppy imports, I imported my puppy when he was 14 weeks old. He for damn sure did not have rabies unless he magically contracted it out of thin air. He was so little he wasn’t even vaccinated for Parvo all the way. And you better believe I was paranoid AF about him catching Parvo, and all my efforts and money to acquire him going down the drain simply because I was too hasty to allow him to walk on the earth. So he had literally never walked on the ground anywhere besides his 3-second ocean baptism at a beach (more on that later) and the interior of my mom’s house. There were zero encounters with rabid anything, unless Snugglepuppy the commercial calming dog toy counts? Nalu was pretty darn crazy roughhousing with Snugglepuppy, which would border on Cujo-like, LOL.
Detail 2: my puppy received BOTH of his rabies shots directly from the Halawa Valley HDOA on-site veterinarian, in the land of Hawaii nei itself. Let us be super clear about that fact. The specific details of how rabies vaccines work in Hawaii are that the first vaccine is strong enough to protect a puppy for one year’s time. The second rabies shot, by Hawaiian standards, is a 3-year shot because this state is rabies-free. So if my puppy got rabies-vaccinated from the HDOA itself, and if they are so uncertain that their own vaccines may not be 100% guaranteed to work, then why we all spending $1200 for a 120-day quarantine and getting rabies vaccinations in the first place, yenno?? If the state then require local residents, after spending 120 days in puppy quarantine, and getting their rabies shot, to turn around and spend $600+ more to prove that their vaccine is sufficiently in a dog’s system, well then that’s not a reflection of our dogs, it’s a reflection of their vaccine’s questionability.
But then let’s be real, this is not about anything making logical sense– its about a money-making scheme that the Hawaiian islands have monopolized.
Detail 3: when you try to comb the websites of Hawaiian veterinarians, zero of them are going to advertise the price of their FAVN blood draw. In order to find out the costs you have to call each of them directly and ask over the phone how much they charge. Which I highly recommend you shop around for. All of the veterinarian websites on this island will default you back to the HDOA website, which will default you to the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Lab’s website. Which will lie and tell everyone this test costs $90. And then you hop on the phone with Hawaiian veterinarians and they tell you the test costs between $400 and $700. I’m sorry– what? How the heck is it possible and legal to literally advertise a cost for this test that is four to eight times the cost of what the motherland diagnostic laboratory who performs the test is charging?
Exactly. Because this is a dog-blood money-making monopoly. And they aren’t as concerned about the wellbeing of your pet or your pocketbook, as they are about continuing to make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on this test.
It is one thing if the dog is coming from the mainland and has lived out portions of its walkable life on mainland terrain. I don’t want Lyme’s Disease or rabies, thank you very much. but shouldn’t the state of Hawaii know by default that such a puppy is sufficiently vaccinated and rabies-free by virtue of its own vaccines and its own veterinarians? Do they not trust their own shots? And if not, then why wouldn’t they just roll the FAVN into the 120-day quarantine experience by default, so that the puppy could go home and be with its owner in 90 days instead of 120?
And then it would be an added perk that the pup could go home early, they could open up space at the allegedly overwhelmed quarantine facility, and the owner of that puppy would have the advantage of getting to travel with their puppy for the next three years if they so desired? After all, we have already paid the system over $1200, what more do they want from us? Oh wait…. $800 more.
Stay tuned for my next post, where I am going to provide for you a list of FAVN blood test fees from local Hawaiian veterinarians.
Mahalo for the read, fur parents!
puppy & paradise 