How we verify pet travel rules

The seven rules we never break

1. Official sources only. Every rule cites a government page: the destination first, then the country of origin. Commercial sites, forums and airlines are leads, never citations.
2. Quotes, not paraphrases. Each requirement carries the exact sentence it came from, copied from the page itself. Summaries (including AI summaries) drop conditions, so we never copy from them.
3. Never guess. If the wording is ambiguous the step says so and explains the question. “Not covered yet” and “unknown” are valid answers.
4. Our assumptions are labelled. When we convert “10 working days” into calendar days, or add a safety margin, the plan says it is our figure, not an official one.
5. Work it out by hand first. Each test trip’s expected answer is worked out from the official text before the engine runs. If they disagree, we find out who is right: often the test data was wrong, sometimes the rule.
6. No country-specific code. Countries live in data files only; the engine that turns rules into dates is generic and tested separately.
7. Show the doubt. Short summaries and rules past their re-check date are flagged on the page, not hidden.

How a rule gets on the site

1. We read the destination’s official pages, then the origin’s, and note every number with the sentence it came from.
2. We record how the rules branch: by origin group, pet age, whether the owner travels with the pet, layovers and more.
3. We write the rule file and the test trips, run the checks, and verify every quote against the live page.
4. Pages that block scripts, and PDF or Word documents, are checked by hand against the document itself.

How we keep it fresh

• Every rule file has a checked date and a re-check by date.
• A script re-reads the live pages every day and reports any quote that no longer appears word for word, and any rule file past its re-check date.
• 39 of our 132 sources block scripts or are documents: they are verified by hand and re-checked on the same schedule.
• Every addition and meaningful change is recorded in what changed.

What we cannot promise

• That an authority has not changed a rule since we last checked. The date on each page tells you how fresh it is.
• That an officer will accept a pet at the border. We tell you what the official rules ask for; the decision is theirs.
• Coverage of every country, species and situation. The countries page shows what is covered and what is only a short summary.