Considering Relo to France with Mixed Breed Dog (Cat 1?)

And what sort of person would want a dog of a breed called Extra-large Bully?

Thanks for the link. My nephew has a little gorgeous Staffie that doesn’t even come to my knees and thought he couldn’t come to France but it clearly states the little ones aren’t on the list! Yay!

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I have finally found the legal criteria that France uses to determine which category a dog fits into. We used them to assess our staffie against, and which formed the basis for our own DIY bilingual certificate that we got our vet to sign 
Apologies if you’ve already reviewed this piece of legislation! See the Annexe at the end of the arrete for the detail needed.

https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/loda/id/LEGITEXT000005627880/#:~:text=Les%20chiens%20visés%20dans%20le,cylindrique%20avec%20les%20cÎtes%20arquées.

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I get quite annoyed with the mis-labelling of bull breeds. Like so much, all started through ignorance by Americans.

How the dickens can a Staffordshire Bull Terrier be also an American Staffordshire bull terrier? It is only because someone way back bred a Staffie with loads of other bad dogs, and being too unintelligent and lazy, they decided to coin the name American Staffordshire - not recognised as a breed by the UK Kennel Club. And like everything eminating from the US ignorance, it ends up taking over and pulls down the good that is THE Staffie.

I do feel sorry for the Staffie, an affectionate dog as you can find. Thankfully the Americans never got hold of the English Bull Terrier in the same way thus allowing it to have an easier passage through life :grinning:

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SBTs are the sweetest creatures, I love them. Horribly exploited and mistreated all too often.

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Hi everyone, after speaking with my vet and doing my own research I still feel a bit confused about taking my dog to France


We plan on driving from our home in the UK through France, Spain and Portugal with our Lab x staffy (not american). We are not relocating, just want to take a 3 week trip and bring our best friend along.

To me he looks more lab than staffy but understand this is subjective. Has anyone travelled recently?

@George1 would you mind sharing your DIY certificate so i can get an idea of what needs to be written?

Thanks for any advice in advance :slight_smile:

Here is my dog Vinny for reference

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Shows his face / head better here

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Too long out of cross Channel travel with dogs to be of help but welcome aboard where I am sure you will get the info you want, and thanks for the lovely pics. :joy:

Indeed and they aren’t alone in being condemned for pure racism. My lovely Rottie, Boss, was a case in point. He didn’t always look as gloomy as he seems top left. :smiley:

Hi Kayleigh, unfortunately we’ve searched high and low through all our files, and can’t now locate either soft or hard copies. Our lovely dog, Chaos (!) who caused us to prepare a DIY certificate, was sadly put down some time ago, and my wife probably then cleared out his records.

A few thoughts


Your lovely Vinny really does not look like the sort of dog that the authorities are concerned about. My wife, who volunteers at a rescue centre where the Dangerous Dogs issues are regularly applied, says that (for the best possible reasons!), nobody would give your dog a second look. In contrast, here are two photos of our dog, Chaos, who looked much closer to the criteria that France applies (see annex in the link I posted above).


I think it highly unlikely you will have a problem with Vinny, unless behaviourally you are concerned he might threaten another dog or human on your trip through France. If you are still concerned, you might want to create your own DIY document, and take - in French- the points in the annex referred to earlier, and under each point, comment on why Vinny does not meet those criteria. Then do a UK translation below. We found that our UK vet wouldn’t sign the French wording, not unreasonably as he didn’t understand French, but was happy to sign under the English version
Even if your vet doesn’t sign anything, it all looks helpful to a third party to have a document to hand
Take a metric tape measure with you so in the hopefully highly unlikely scenario where you are having to evidence your DIY conclusions you can do so by reference to the measurements.

Good luck and do let us know how you get on.

It is indeed difficult to identify and determine the dominant breed in a cross breed. That said, it looks to me like your Vinny is very Labrador.

I would expect that people in France will also identify him as Labrador because it is familiar and popular here, and often used to label any dog with even a vaguely Labrador resemblance.

I do wish you and Vinny well. Your anxiety is understandable and a credit to your love for your pet.