Puerto Rico

On arrival & aboard

Veterinary inspection

Not yet documentedconfidence: Unknown. Not located in any source yet.

At the dock

What the PRDA regulations require is a certificate of veterinary inspection signed by an accredited veterinarian in the state or territory of ORIGIN, valid 30 days from the inspection date — carry it, and the rabies certificate, on arrival. They describe no advance-notice, appointment or arrival-inspection procedure for a private vessel, and the dogs-and-cats section is written for interstate movement: it says "Dogs and cats do not need a PRDA import permit for interstate movement" and refers animals originating outside the United States or its territories to the Federal Import Regulations instead. The only cited description of an examination on landing is a commercial site's, and it places it at the entry airport. Confirm with the Department of Agriculture before landing an animal.

Carrier or crate

Not required, and no standard is set. The PRDA regulation lists the requirements for a dog or cat as a closed set of bullets and a crate, carrier or kennel is not among them; the one place it uses "carrier" is of an animal that is "found to be affected, a carrier of or been recently exposed to any infectious, contagious, or communicable disease". The only crate reference in any cited source is a commercial site's IATA question, which it raises under "Entering Puerto Rico by Air".confidence: Inferred. Backed by an official source but not yet certified by a human reviewer.^[5,6]

Confinement

Nothing requires a dog or cat to be confined, aboard or ashore. PRDA's regulation does impose an isolation period on arriving animals, and it is written for livestock only: "all livestock must be isolated (quarantined) for 15 days immediately after entering Puerto Rico at the destination facility to allow for further testing by the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture." The dogs-and-cats section that follows it asks for a health certificate, a rabies vaccination within six months, external parasite treatment and an official identification — and for nothing to be done with the animal after it lands.confidence: Inferred. Backed by an official source but not yet certified by a human reviewer.^[5]

Leash

Not addressed by anything read for this file. Both cited sources are entry-requirement documents — PRDA's admission regulation and a commercial travel page — and neither says anything about how an animal is to be controlled once it is ashore. Puerto Rico's own animal-protection and municipal ordinances were not consulted, so this records a gap in the sources rather than the absence of a rule in Puerto Rico.confidence: Unknown. Not located in any source yet.

Muzzle

Not addressed by anything read for this file, on the same footing as the leash finding above: no muzzle provision appears in the PRDA regulation, and no conduct law was consulted.confidence: Unknown. Not located in any source yet.

By yacht

Sailing in from any foreign port makes this an international arrival into the United States even though Puerto Rico is US territory: the inherited CDC dog rules apply on top of these requirements, and PRDA says so itself — it refers animals originating outside the United States or its territories to the Federal Import Regulations, and points the reader to cdc.gov/dogtravel. Arriving directly from the US mainland or the USVI is domestic movement instead, and PRDA's dog-and-cat requirements are drafted for exactly that case: they speak of a veterinarian accredited "in the state or territory of origin" and of not needing a permit "for interstate movement". Both cited documents are in English, so no Spanish-language search was possible on the corpus; the regulation PRDA publishes in Spanish was not among them, and a conduct rule stated only there would not have been found. Nothing addresses an animal that stays aboard and never lands either, which is why there is no transit section — see verification.outstanding_questions.

Quarantine