Your dog or cat to Portugal: chip, rabies jab, 21 days — and after 120 days the SIAC

Yes, your dog or cat simply comes with you to Portugal, without quarantine and without an import permit. The Portuguese veterinary authority DGAV names three requirements for a journey within Europe: a chip, an EU pet passport in the name of the person the animal travels with, and a valid rabies vaccination — and after a first jab that vaccination is only valid after 21 days. The costs sit only with your vet. The trap comes after the journey: whoever stays in Portugal with their animal for 120 days or longer must have it registered in the SIAC, the national database, and that can only be done through a vet accredited for it. Whoever skips it has an animal that does not exist for Portuguese law.

What has to be arranged before the journey?

The order is fixed, and it is not reversible: first the chip, then the vaccination, then waiting. DGAV and the European portal say the same.

Requirement	What exactly applies	Where it says so
Identification	a microchip; a tattoo only counts if made before July 2011 and legible	DGAV, Your Europe
Rabies vaccination	given when the animal was at least 12 weeks old, and on or after the day of the chip	DGAV, Your Europe
Waiting period	after a first vaccination 21 days; after a booster given on time no waiting period	DGAV, Your Europe
Passport	the EU pet passport, issued in the country where the owner lives, in the name of whoever travels with the animal	DGAV
Number	at most 5 animals per traveller; above that trade rules apply	DGAV, Your Europe

According to DGAV the passport must be correctly completed, with the dates on which each act was actually carried out — the authority warns that a sloppy passport causes "serious inconvenience" to owner and animal. So have your vet not just inject but also write.

What the waiting period means in practice: if your animal is already chipped and the rabies vaccination runs on without a gap, this is a small step. If the vaccination has lapsed or was never given, the new jab counts as a first one, and your departure date shifts by three weeks. Portugal does not require treatment against the tapeworm Echinococcus; according to Your Europe that requirement applies only to Finland, Ireland, Malta, Norway and Northern Ireland.

What changes after arrival?

Here Portugal departs from what you find on the Dutch checklist. All dogs, cats and ferrets in Portugal must be chipped and be in the SIAC, the Sistema de Informação de Animais de Companhia. For animals entering from another EU country DGAV is precise: they are compulsorily registered in the SIAC as soon as they stay in Portugal for 120 days or longer. The registration is done by a vet accredited in the SIAC, in the name of the owner in the passport, and produces the Documento de Identificação de Animal de Companhia — a DIAC, on paper or digital — that should accompany the animal.

Whoever gets a puppy or kitten in Portugal knows the same deadline from the other side: animals born after 25 October 2019 must be chipped and registered within 120 days of birth.

Put the 120 days in your diary next to your other deadlines. The SIAC registration falls exactly on the moment when you yourself have to stand at the municipality: three months plus thirty days. Two registrations in the same week, at two different counters — plan them together, then you forget neither.

Do you have a dog of a "dangerous" breed?

Then a licence is added. DGAV writes that whoever stays in Portugal for four months or longer with a cão potencialmente perigoso must, besides the SIAC registration, obtain a keeper's licence from the junta de freguesia of their place of residence. For that you supply a series of documents: a sterilisation declaration for animals not in a recognised stud book, a certificate of good conduct of the keeper, a liability insurance and proof that you have completed training for keepers of dangerous dogs. The SIAC registration of such a dog from abroad is, moreover, not done by your own vet but by the municipal vet.

Which breeds are on the Portuguese list, DGAV's page does not say; ask the junta of the municipality where you are going to live before you put the dog in the car — this is not a procedure you sort out in the first week after arrival.

How does this fit into the drive?

Portugal is two long days by road, and that is long for an animal on the back seat. Plan the overnight stop with the animal in mind, and keep the passport to hand: in EU traffic there is no standard check, but whoever is checked must be able to show it. In the roadmap for Portugal the pet is a step of its own in the moving phase, with the three weeks before departure and the 120 days after it watched — and the rest of the move, from household goods to car, sits next to it.

In Vertrekklaar this is phase 3 of 5 of the journey, step 3.3: the same steps, but for your situation — in your order, tickable, and with the deadlines watched. See the whole journey to Portugal or go straight to step 3.3 in the open plan.