🇷🇴Adopting a rescue dog from Romania

Romania is where the largest number of overseas rescue dogs coming to the UK originate, and it's the country we're adopting from ourselves — so it's the one we can speak to first-hand. Most dogs come from public shelters or the street, via UK-registered rescues that handle the paperwork and transport.

Getting a Romanian dog to the UK

Romania is an EU country, so the entry requirements are the standard ones — microchip, rabies vaccination, a 21-day wait, and tapeworm treatment before arrival. See the rabies and 21-day guide for the timeline. Dogs usually travel by road, a multi-day haul across Europe; read transport day for what arrival is like.

The health tests that matter

Brucella canis is the headline concern for Eastern European dogs: it's considered endemic in Eastern Europe, and ESCCAP UK & Ireland has called for testing of dogs imported from endemic countries to be made compulsory. In a 2023 study of imported dogs published in Veterinary Record, 24% carried at least one exotic pathogen, and Leishmania was found most often in dogs with Romanian-origin microchips — so a full imported-dog blood panel (Brucella, Leishmania, Ehrlichia, Babesia, heartworm) is worth discussing with your vet.

The dogs

Romanian rescue dogs are overwhelmingly mixed-breed shelter and street dogs of every size and age, rather than a particular breed type.

Sources

• GOV.UK — bringing your pet to Great Britain
• ESCCAP UK & Ireland
• BVA — the disease risk from imported dogs
• Wright et al., 2023, Veterinary Record — exotic pathogens in imported dogs