Bentley is back!!

Bentley has been living with our dear neighbors in Norway ever since the last week of April, and they have grown quite fond of him over the past 6 months. He has had such a good life with them in the care of three girls who loved brushing him and two active parents who were always taking him on runs and bike rides and up to their hytte in the mountains! I think it was a sad day on Monday this week when the lady from Transpet came to pick him up from their house. But we have vowed to keep in touch and hopefully they will come visit us (well, probably mostly Bentley) this summer. We are so, so grateful to Heidi and TK and their girls for loving him and looking after him while we waited for the rabies quarantine period to run its course so that he could come live in the UK.

It sounds like the road trip from Asker, Norway to mid-Sussex, England was quite an adventure! We saw a big motor home with "The Pet Transporter" written across it pull up in the pitch black rainy night last night and then Bentley came bounding in accompanied by the Transpet lady called Jane and all of his belongings and paperwork.
Here is our long-awaited reunion:


We invited Jane in for a cup of tea and some pizza dinner and she told us about the journey... driving in the first snowfall of the year while in Norway, then over to Stockholm in Sweden to pick up 2 more dogs and 4 cats for another family, then making her way solo driving this motorhome across Europe to cross the English Channel in Calais, France.
At this point when she was getting ready to board the ferry to cross into the UK, the UK Immigration wouldn't let Bentley in because his passport was not from the EU! So Jane turned around and fortunately found a vet in the town who could transfer all of Bentley's information to a new, French, passport! Then Jane and her motorhome full of animals had to race to catch the last ferry of the day. I'm so glad that I didn't know about any of this drama as it was unfolding...
I think Bentley must be one of the few dogs in the world to have 2 different passports! Here he is saying goodbye to Jane:
We spent the evening letting him get used to us again. I think he was quite tired emotionally after being sad to leave his foster family, then enjoying the company and comfort of Jane and his fellow travelers, then arriving back to us but in a place that has all new smells. Bentley's eyes look sad this morning but we are taking him out to the forest for a walk now, so hopefully that will cheer him up.