Documentary storyteller Lauren Anders Brown navigated the complexities of pet vaccination records and health requirements for years, in order to travel internationally with her furry companion \u2013 taking her on 75 flights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then one day, a timing miscalculation and an oversight regarding a de-wormer ingredient, resulted in a 24-hour separation from her beloved dog. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this incident and her concurrent work on identity and documentation, Brown came up with an idea for a centralized digital identity system that would replace an error-prone paper system, facilitating the management of veterinary documents and transport requirements \u2013 a sort of digital passport and travel planner for pets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is how PadsPass<\/strong> was created. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tomilli sat down with PadsPass founder Lauren Anders Brown to learn more about her ingenious app that is making it easier for pet owners to travel with their fur babies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lauren Anders Brown:<\/strong> The problem with animal health, as I learned, is that you have different requirements for animals according to where you’re departing from, where you’re arriving to, and depending on the species, and the type of trip you have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve traveled with a dog for 13 years. I traveled with my last dog on 75 flights. It was pretty routine for us to get in a carrier, get on a plane, and get to where we had to go. I would sometimes have to camp out at different government offices to get the paperwork right. When I was living in the UK, a paper pet passport was really helpful. It was the first step in allowing pet travel to be slightly easier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then one time, I accidentally booked our flight too close to our arrival time and she needed to have a vet appointment at least 24 hours before traveling. And I didn’t account for the time zone differences. Then, the veterinarian gave her the wrong dewormer. Just a simple kind of mix-up regarding two ingredients: one was approved and one was not. The physical paperwork with a photo of her UK pet passport got sent off to the UK government for approval – they approved it, received the landing fee, but upon arrival rechecked all the paperwork and realized there had been an error and took her from me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That made me realize how easy it is to get it wrong. And all I could think while separated from her was \u2018What good can come out of this<\/em>?\u2019 At the time I was also doing a lot of work on identity. I had just finished a documentary on Syrian identity and looking at how important it is for humans to be able to declare who they are, where they were born, where they went to school, who they’ve married and how that can stop their own milestones. I’m not trying to compare an international conflict with me traveling with my dog, but at the same time, these are situations where documentation can control your life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s when I started to imagine a kind of pet travel identity system. It would have to cover all of the areas that are incorporated in pet travel, meaning that it would involve the transportation providers, veterinarians and governments in order to have access to one record when it comes to an animal rather than having different pieces of paper all over the place and trying to have it make sense, and also having to repeat it for each trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reverse that sentence. We start with one verified record. So, when you download PadsPass on your phone, you start by adding your pet’s microchip number. Then you upload vaccination documents or any kind of other health record that’s associated with your pet to start building your pet’s health identity record within the app. All of that information whenever you upload a physical document then becomes digitized, and the information gets extracted and stored. Then, when you go to plan a trip, you put in your dates and destination, and you get a complete custom set of requirements specifically for your pet needs for that exact trip. And if you don’t like what comes out, you can adjust the mode of transportation. It is not just a single checklist that is generic for a single destination but a list that specifically applies to your animal and your method of travel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I can tell you from experience that government websites are often out-of-date. So, being able to engage with some of these government organizations is a huge advantage that PadsPass has. I’m personally a member of the US Animal Health Association, a member of the British Veterinarian Association. Now, I obviously can’t hold accreditations for all of the countries in the world, but we have trusted partners and as we grow in scale, we’ll be able to update the requirements, which can be time-sensitive. Some recent changes, for example, are with screwworms in Mexico. We were able to adjust those requirements in advance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of the requirements are citable from a government source. AI almost never gets it correct. When it comes to animal health, there are just too many variables. PadsPass actually ends up looking at 120 data points within our software to determine if a pet can travel or not. Most pet parents spend over two hours per trip to determine these requirements if they do it on their own, to determine if they can even travel with their pet. And that doesn’t even get to the full planning process, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n How does PadsPass improve coordination between pet owners, veterinarians, airlines, and border authorities, and which processes can it reduce from minutes or hours to just seconds?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n PadsPass lays everything out in a clean and simple way. It gives you each requirement showing the ones that you’ve already met and the ones that you might need to do some work on before you travel and the ones that need to be brought to your attention. It also lets you compare different airlines. So, it will let you know which airlines you’re eligible for. Not all airlines allow a pet to travel in the cabin, so it flags that for instance, or if cargo is an option. There are a couple of cargo providers that we have added within the platform. It’s important to note that we haven’t yet launched with every single destination in the app. We’ve launched with a few trusted corridors that have been tried, tested, and battle tested. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Veterinarians are just as stressed about pet travel as the pet parents are. They have to keep up with the regulations. So, giving them an easier way to understand the requirements for a tiny island like Bermuda where they can complete a health certificate in four minutes is a huge achievement compared to the hours I would spend in a veterinarian’s office in order to get some of the paperwork done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With governments, many are already accepting digital certificates and accreditations, but it’s the process before that that ends up being paper-based. And so, what we’re doing here at PadsPass is digitizing it from end to end. I don’t think I can say anything about it just yet, but we’re starting with one government, digitizing from end to end, and then we hope to be able to bring that same technology to other governments as we open up corridors around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s really important too for biosecurity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rabies, for example, is still an issue around the world. And so being able to keep a rabies free status is very important. Or, for example, I live in Bermuda, we don’t have ticks and so we don’t have Lyme disease. And so, one of the requirements to re-enter here is that a certain type of treatment is given to kill any ticks that might be on an animal before they come. And it has to be administered by a veterinarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you know what we don’t say that every pet can travel every time. You know, the mission of PadsPass is helping pet parents make the best decision for their pets. Not every trip is a pet trip. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Going back to your personal story, how long were you separated from your dog when that initial experience happened? And what happened to her during that time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n She was taken from me for over 24 hours. I think the most challenging part was animal travel is complex and so once you change your pathway of arrival in a country, the requirements change unexpectedly. So, I had to get a customs clearance for her which wasn’t something that was required initially when she had already been pre-cleared when she was arriving with me in the cabin. And so, I was scrambling for that trying to get into communication with the animal reception center that was already overwhelmed with a lot of requests. I have to say, my heart does go out to the animal reception checkpoints, because they’re trying to do their jobs. And, and for a country like the United Kingdom that is rabies free, that job has really high stakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I learned from that experience just how much they have to deal with and had a lot of compassion and understanding for the fact that they didn’t want to take my dog. It’s just that they had no other choice, because she didn’t meet the requirements at the end of the day. I got her back after she had been given a new dewormer. So, I just started figuring out how I am going to not let this ever happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I had the digital pet passport, PadsPass, when I was on that trip, I would have never boarded the plane, because I would have seen that when I booked that veterinarian appointment, it would have been too close to my arrival time and that would have been the first flag. The second flag would have been having the veterinarian confirm the type of de-wormer she was giving her, and the vet didn’t do anything wrong. She gave her a dewormer. It just didn’t have the active ingredient that was needed by the country of arrival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n What does being recognized on the Tomilli Summit Dubai 2026 Golden List mean to PadsPass, and how could this international visibility support the adoption of your patent-pending solution?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Making the Tomilli Summit\u2019s Golden List is a huge honor for PadsPass. We aren’t taking over the world just yet, but one day we will take over the world when it comes to pet travel. This is a huge recognition and a first step in that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Families aren’t always traditional, a lot of times families include four-legged members. And so, being able to have that joy of traveling with your pet and extending it to others and celebrating that is something that I am wholeheartedly proud of. And I can’t wait for more and more places to be able to adopt and use the platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Documentary storyteller Lauren Anders Brown navigated the complexities of pet vaccination records and health requirements for years, in order to travel internationally with her furry companion \u2013 taking her on 75 flights. Then one day, a timing miscalculation and an oversight regarding a de-wormer ingredient, resulted in a 24-hour separation from her beloved dog. Inspired<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[706],"tags":[713,742,714],"class_list":["post-24863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business-ideas","tag-top","tag-trending","tag-trends"],"yoast_head":"\nHow did PadsPass come about, and what challenges did you identify in the international pet travel and relocation process?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How does the platform turn each country\u2019s pet import requirements into a single digital record that can be verified quickly and easily?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Health and border regulations are constantly evolving. How do you ensure that the information in each digital passport remains accurate, secure, and up to date?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n