Build the packet in one fixed order and keep that order everywhere you describe or copy it, so anyone opening it finds the same map. On top sits a one-page summary of your dog's conditions, allergies, current treatments, and anything a new clinician needs in the first minute. Behind it, in order, come the rabies certificate and vaccine summary, the full clinical notes, test results with the imaging files themselves, specialist letters, microchip and identity details, and finally emergency contacts together with your current clinic's contacts. Assembled this way, the packet works for a new-city veterinarian, an emergency clinic at midnight, or a boarding kennel — the same document, three audiences.
Gathering From Every Practice, Not Just the Latest
Start the collection early, because a move scatters your attention and clinics need time. Request complete copies from every practice that has treated your dog: your regular clinic, any emergency hospital visited even once, and any specialist who saw her for a referral. Ask for clinical notes and imaging files, not invoices alone — invoices prove a visit happened, while notes and images tell a new clinician what was found and what it looked like. Where histories overlap between practices, a short cover note from you explaining which clinic handled what saves the new vet a puzzle.
The Summary Page Does the Heavy Lifting
Write the top page as if its reader has ninety seconds: ongoing conditions in plain words, allergies with the reactions seen, current treatments as recorded by your clinics, surgeries worth flagging, and recent test results that set baselines a new vet will compare against. Keep it factual and dated, and resist editing it into a narrative. Update this page after every significant visit from now on; a summary that lags the records behind it quietly misleads the very people it exists to help.
Paper, Digital, and the Journey Itself
Keep one paper copy that travels with you in the car or cabin bag — never in a removals van or checked luggage — and one digital copy on your phone plus a backup a partner or family member can reach. During the move itself, dogs get loose at service stops and arrive stressed in unfamiliar streets, so the packet's identity section earns its place: a recent photograph, microchip number, and your mobile number belong where a stranger helping you would look first. Register the new address with the chip registry once you land, and update the packet's contact page the same week.
Timing the Build Around the Move
Start gathering four to six weeks before moving day if you can, because clinics process copy requests alongside their daily caseload and specialists can be slower still. Chase missing pieces while you still live near the practices that hold them; walking into a familiar reception is far easier than pursuing a file across the country. Photograph or scan every page as it arrives so the packet exists digitally before the paper version is final. In your final week, do one completeness pass against the packet order — summary, certificates, notes, results, letters, identity, contacts — and mark any gap honestly on the summary page rather than hoping nobody asks.
Handing Over in the New City
Book a first appointment with your new clinic soon after arriving, while the packet is fresh in your mind, and hand the whole file over rather than answering questions from memory. That first visit sets baselines for weight and general health and lets the new team flag anything the packet raised. Owners keeping the packet in KinsLe can maintain it as a Pet Passport, updating each section as new records arrive so the next move, referral, or emergency starts from a file that is already complete.