Friday 24 October 2008

Sad Day for Lily Lovers :(

As most everyone knows Jeremy and I have a precious little beagle named Lily! We absoluetly love her to death, and she's pretty much like our baby! Today we recieved some pretty hard news that I wanted to share with everyone to give the a little update on the situation...

Jeremy and I have really been looking forward to going to London to pick up Lily today! We've been counting down since July, and getting her ready to come over since January!! Let me just say that getting a dog ready to come over to the UK is A LOT of work. You need to get the Microchipped, and get rabies shots, and have a favon test done--which is a blood work test that takes about 6 months to process, and even get a puppy passport or (EU journal). Well since we couldn't bring her with us in July since the runways were too hot, we had to arrange for her to stay in Utah with my parents, and they would put her on a plane to come to us! Well we were under the impression everything was taken care of, as our vets in TX had assured us we were doing everything right. So after waiting 3 long months and a 2 hour commute to London we were so ready to see our baby! We find the place with ease, walk in the building and tell them we're there to pick up our dog! After about 10 minutes a woman from DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) approaches us. DEFRA is in charge of going over all the paperwork that you have to get to send your dog to the UK-- This woman starts to tell Jeremy and I that it looks like there is a issue in Lily's paperwork that concerns them--"it looks as though her rabies shot was given to her before she was microchipped..." She proceeds to tell us that in order for the Europeon Union to pass our puppy and let her into the country is by following a procedure that intails a getting things done in a certain order 1) Microchip, 2) Rabies shots and 3) Favon blood work-- Our vet gave the rabies shot first. Well DEFRA wanted to call our vet to make sure that the information showing was correct, or maybe the dates had been mistakenly been written incorrectly. Unfortunatly due to the fact that we're about 6 hours ahead of TX we were advised to go home (without even seeing our dog!!) because there was nothing that we could do until they talked to a vet. Well around 5:30 I recieved a call that they got a hold of the vet the found the information had not been a mistake and had accidentaly been done in the wrong order. So basically what this means is that our Lily failed, and we would now be required to make a decision to send her back to the U.S. or quarantine her for 6 months here in the UK. What a NIGHTMARE!!! Basically we've come to the decision that we're going to put her in quarantine until she is ready to be realesed into our care. Trust me this is not a cheap process, and we've already paid a large amount of money to fly her here in the first place!

So tomorrow we are meeting with the quarantine facility to make arrangements for our baby. She will have to stay there until about April 24. She will be in about 40 miles away from us and we are allowed to visit her which is good, but because of our work schedules we will only be able to go on Saturdays. It has been such a awful experience and we can only imagine what she is going through, being around people she doesn't know all alone. We feel absolutely terrible, and I've been in tears for most of the day!! We just hope that the next 24 weeks go by super fast so we can finally be with our baby again. We love her so much!

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us through this time. My mom and dad have been SOOO helpful, and my Grandma has offered us more than we could have asked for. I am so lucky to have such an amazing family, that offers us such love and support! Thanks for you help during this hard time for Jeremy and I. We love you!
WE LOVE YOU LILY BUG!

2 comments:

Natalie and Ryan said...

Lexi that is the saddest story ever!!! I'm so sorry for you guys! I hope that the time will fly by for you guys!

Todd and Jordyn Johnson said...

Oh how sad! I cant believe that. Im way sorry! Good to hear from ya!