There is a chance I will be moving to Ireland sometime in the next two years or so, and I was wondering if anyone has any idea of current price ranges for shipping from the US to Ireland? Also would appreciate advice from people who have shipped horses to other countries before - this will be a first for both me and my horse!
Look on the internet and FB for the several western barns/trainers that sell to Europe and ask them.
I know one that sells and sends horses to quarantine horses regularly, going by her FB page.
I expect there are some where you are.
I shipped my horse from the US to the UK in September, 2006. I used this company, http://timdutta.com/, which more recently sent the World Cup horses from Europe to the US, so they are obviously pretty good. If it’s good enough for Valegro… ect. etc. It cost me about $4000, not including ground transportation (of which there was a lot), but I imagine prices have gone up quite a bit in the last nine years.
The Dutta Corp. arranged all the ground transport, on both the US and European ends. They made sure it linked up with the flight. I was in Colorado at the time and had to get to the northeast of England. The cheapest way was for the horse to fly from JFK in New York to Schiphol, near Amsterdam. The transport company will also sort out all the customs stuff and communicate with you and your vet about what kind of vaccinations, certificates, etc. the horse needs to get into whichever country. I did not have to personally do any paperwork hassle; just hold the horse for the vet while they certified she was healthy and took blood for whatever tests were needed. They sent that to me and the shipping company, and then all I had to do was put horse on a lorry and show up.
My horse rode in a lorry from CO to NY, and after the flight, she was in a lorry from Amsterdam to Durham. Had I been organized and had my shit together, I could have flown with the horse as a ‘groom.’ If you want to do this, tell Dutta Corps. early and they will sort it out. I learned the hard way that if the limited seats in the cargo plane aren’t filled a week or two before the flight, the airline will put any crew member who needs a lift there. They may not tell the horse shipping company this until the last minute. Anyway, after that clusterf*(&9ck, the horse transport company sorted me out on a commercial flight, and I met the horse in the Netherlands (without my luggage; long story). They were also nice enough to let me hang out with her in New York, before we boarded our respective aircraft (she landed on time with all her luggage; I was not so lucky on either count). Their people picked me up at the passenger terminal at Schiphol and took me to the outlying parts of the airport, where the horses are loaded onto 747s. I rode with her on ground transport from there to Durham, which took about five days and one ferry (contemplating the bizarreness of having a horse, but no spare underwear due to luggage going AWOL).
I don’t know if Dublin or Shannon airports take livestock. They may do. I know that Stanstead in England does, but it costs way more than Amsterdam. Like a stupid amount more; I didn’t do it. If horses have to go through Schiphol, which has the most extensive facilities in Europe for this sort of thing and was the hub for it when I did it – hence being the cheapest flight from New York – they would take two ferries. One from Calais to Dover, then probably the closest Irish ferry is Holyhead to Dublin.
