ASSOCIATED PRESS
Quarantined for 3 1/2 months at the Animal Quarantine Station in Halawa Valley, a 2-year-old poodle named Mack greets owner Trenton Livers. Mack is scheduled to be released next week.
Pet owners like
new quarantine rules
When Dallas executive chef Paul Dean and his wife started planning a move to Maui two years ago, he was not worried about going to an unknown place, taking a risky career step or leaving behind all of his possessions except for what he could carry on the plane.
It was little Kikko-lie that stopped the move.
Dean's 9-year-old Pekinese dog "just couldn't make it" through 30 days at the state-run quarantine. "I don't have pets, I have babies," he said. "If we couldn't get him there, we weren't moving."
But Hawaii's new quarantine regulations, which take effect today, radically alter strict rules that have confined all pets for at least a month when they arrive in the only rabies-free state in the nation.
Pet lovers have been fighting the rules for years in a state that is not very pet-friendly, anyway. Even leashed dogs are barred from public parks and many beaches.
Under the revised regulations, Hawaii still remains the only state with a quarantine for cats and dogs. The new rules are similar to those adopted by other countries with animal quarantine laws -- the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.
The relaxed rules, which allow pet owners to take their pet home in as little as a few hours after arrival if they have the required shots, are expected to attract not only more pet-owning residents to the islands, but more visitors traveling with their dogs and cats.
The Deans finally put their move on the calendar when Gov. Linda Lingle signed the new quarantine regulations into law on June 22.
When you take on the responsibility of pets, "you take them up forever," Dean said. "You can't just dispose of them."
For many pet owners interested in coming to Hawaii, quarantine was never an option, whether because the length of their stay was as long as the quarantine itself or because they thought the procedure cruel and inhumane.
Dawn Habgood, co-author of the travel book series "Pets on the Go," said she has received thousands of inquiries over 25 years from travelers interested in visiting Hawaii with their pets. Stay away, she said.
"We over the years have avoided writing about Hawaii and talking about it," said Habgood. "It was like holding out this magical place to people but then saying, 'Oh, sorry, can't go.'"
Habgood said she has already altered that advice and is hoping the thousands of people who vacation with their pets each year consider Hawaii as a possible destination.
"I know this is really going to open up some nice doors," she said. "It's opened up an area that was hidden from us before this."
Hawaii's original quarantine law, imposed in 1912 to keep the islands rabies-free, required all animals entering the islands to be kept at the state quarantine facility for four months.
The rules were revised in 1997 to cut the stay to 30 days for animals who had required shots at least 90 days and no longer than a year before arrival and had an implanted microchip for identification.
The new rules extend the period for blood tests and shots to at least 120 days before arrival but allow animals to be released in no more than five days if they have met all shot and testing requirements before they arrive. They can be released right away if paperwork is sent in at least 10 days ahead.
The rules are complex: The state posted on its Web site a three-page checklist of all the steps pet owners must follow in order to take their pets home directly from Honolulu Airport.
Officials estimate about half of the pets arriving in Hawaii -- some 4,681 were brought here last year -- would escape the longer quarantines. But those pets whose owners do not prepare everything still will end up in the quarantine facility for either 30 or 120 days.
The fee for direct release at the airport is $165 if all paperwork is sent in advance of arrival; that goes up to $224 if the pet requires up to five days of quarantine. A 30-day stay at a state facility costs $655, and a 120-day stay costs $1,080.
Ronald and Judith Aikawa, emergency physicians from Arizona, only started building their retirement home in the islands when they were sure the quarantine rules would be relaxed to allow their eight cats and 7-year-old golden retriever to go through no more than a few days of confinement when they arrived.
Judith Aikawa, who expects her Maui home will be completed by early next year, was wary of quarantine because a number of her friends noticed sharp changes in their pets after their stay at the state facilities. Some animals, she said, were completely different after the experience.
Opposition to the old quarantine rules has been around for years, but momentum increased last year when some lawmakers, along with a coalition of hundreds of pet owners, joined forces against the state Department of Agriculture, which oversees the pet quarantine regulations and facilities.
Chris Quackenbush, the founder of the Community Quarantine Coalition of Hawaii, said the "new changes are wonderful" but not enough.
The confinement still costs pet owners a lot of money. Quackenbush hopes to push officials to decrease quarantine fees to virtually nothing.
At the quarantine stations located around the state, dogs and cats are kept in open-air, roofed shelters. Some owners, like California resident Crystal Austin, send their pets ahead so that the quarantine period is almost completed by the time they arrive.
"My poor animals didn't have a clue why they were suddenly in jail," she said.
"It was like having your family in prison and having to visit. It was just a hideous thing for people to go through, just horrible."
