Reunite Our Fur Babies With Our Family

On 5th January 2017, our world collapsed when after 6 years of wonderful living in New Zealand, our visas were rejected by Immigration, leaving us with 30 days to pack up our life and leave the country.

What had we done wrong? Absolutely nothing! The visa was declined on the grounds that the company I had worked for (for 6 years) had not advertised my job to see if it could be filled by a NZ citizen. This was despite my role being permanent and never having needed to do this for any previous application, all of which had been approved without issue.

On the advice of an immigration expert, my employer wrote a letter to Immigration to explain that they had not previously been required to do this and they would ensure it was done in future. Sadly, this seemed not to matter and my family (myself, my husband and our 21 month old son who was born in Waitakere Hospital) were rejected and given 30 days to leave the country.

The real travesty of the situation however was our 3 dogs. Humphrey an 11 year old West Highland Terrier, Howard, a 10 year old Basset Hound and Zak, a 4 year old Dalmatian are as much a part of our family as we are. Humphrey and Howard came from the UK with us back in 2010 (we never knew dogs also get jet lag!) and Zak we saved from what would be a life of neglect and torment when he was only a puppy.

Whilst we were in New Zealand, Howard jumped off a bed and burst the discs in his back. He required expensive and emergency surgery, followed by over 12 months of rehabilitation at a canine hydrotherapist. We were just very fortunate at the time that happened my husband had received some inheritance money from the UK that allowed for those bills to be paid.

Our initial plan was of course to bring the dogs with us. We have since moved to Australia whilst we take stock and try to return to New Zealand one day. The problem lies in the cost of transporting them overseas.

Given that we were only allowed such a short timeframe to leave, there was no way we could afford to bring them by the time we had to leave (5th February) and after much heartache and tears, we reluctantly had to find them temporary accomodation, which has itself been costing us money we don't have, adding to the problems we have here.

3 months has now gone by and we are no closer to being able to bring them across. We are in the process of trying to secure visas to allow us to work, but it is both a minefield and a lengthy process.

We all desperately miss our beloved fur babies and we know they are missing us too. Our son, who has now just turned 2, asks about them every day and cannot understand why they are not here.

We just don't know what else to do as we currently have no income. Setting up this page has been very hard because we don't like to ask for help. We just need to get our boys back and reunite as a family