{20feb2012: big news}

I was trying to decide when the best time would be to break the big news I had mentioned briefly in an earlier post. And then I realized I don't think there is a "best" time, so why not share it now. Also a lot of the things we'll be doing in the next few months will be because of the big news.
Right before we went on our last trip to Hawaii, Jason and I found out (we work at the same firm) that our company is making a few strategic changes and one of them would be that our office would be closing. But we were both offered positions in our Singapore office. It was a lot of news to take, I'm still in a bit of shock over it and it's been over a month that we've found out. It's a lot to process, and my biggest concern is Darwin. We're still doing a lot of research trying to figure out the best way to get her there and what we need to do leading up to this big move. I was concerned about the quarantine period in Singapore, but thankfully we can do a few things in advance to hopefully reduce her time from 30 days to 10 days.
I've contacted a few bloggers who've made international moves, like Wild Dingo and of course Honey and Hsin-Yi, and Julie was able to put me in contact with Homer who's made the move to Singapore. I also came across Singapooch while doing some Google searching. They've all been great at answering my initial questions (I'm sure I'll have more once we get further along) and have made me feel more at ease about moving Dar.
I started to contact a pet mover locally and we made our first trip a couple weeks ago to the vet to get her vaccinations and bloodwork started.


After hanging out in the waiting area for a little while we got her in the back, weighed her (13.95lbs! tub!) and got into a room. We were there for an international travel consultation and our great vet tech, Caitlin, had already done a bunch of research on what they needed to do to make this as easy for us as possible.



After a short consultation they got a European microchip implanted (the microchip she had didn't qualify for Singapore), took some blood to do a titer test, and they also did an abscess test of a lump I had found on her (lump came back as just a benign cyst and not cancerous). We decided she could stand to lose at least 10lbs (on the vet's scale of 1 to 5 with 3 being ideal weight, Darwin was at about a 3.5, so she's not obese, but it wouldn't hurt to lose a little).
After the vet we drove down south an hour to Buckley, WA to the pet transporter to get her measured accurately for her kennel (they'll have to custom make it). Jason and I had measured her at home, but after talking to another pet mover we thought it'd be safer to have the expert do it to make sure her crate was exactly the right size. Good thing I took her down there too, because he measured her to be at 3 inches taller than we had done at home (we hadn't measured her with her head fully extended to its highest point). 
Slowly we are getting things figured out, and it shouldn't be a surprise to you if we have a lot of moving update posts in the future. We've also realized that since we are moving so far away that we'd like to do a lot of things (our annual tulip and beer road trip for one) before we go. So be prepared to see a lot of things... or not a lot of things as we may be preparing for the move. Either way... big changes ahead!