We are due to leave the UK and head back to California in late April. We have used dog shippers in the past to get him to Australia and the UK. The big difference this time is the timing of everything. When he went to Australia, we shipped him early since he had to do 30 days quarantine. When we shipped him here, we shipped him late (which became even later because of an Australian paperwork issue) and he was the dog shippers "office dog" for a couple weeks and we already had a place to live. When we head back to the States, not only will we not have an immediate place to live, but we'll be traveling for a couple weeks seeing family up and down the east coast.
My questions are several fold.
Do you think it's better to have the dog boarded here for up to a month while we see the family and get settled in Cali and then have him shipped out to us?
Or should we ship him to Cali early and have him boarded on that end while we do the east coast and get settled.
Shipping him to the east coast while we travel is our option of last resort. My in-laws on the east coast aren't really dog people and we'd still have to deal with getting him out to Cali. Plus, we really be going up and down the entire coast (Boston to Miami). Basically, I don't think we can all be on the same flight and keep our sanity - primarily because of 2 year old DS.
Oh, and did I mention he's an older, neurotic dachshund (read crazy) who really just needs to be pampered a bit?
Finally, can anyone recommend a pet shipper to take care of the paperwork/pickup/delivery to the airport on this end? We're based in Portsmouth.
Thanks!