Moving here with a dog.

The thirty day clock.

This is the one that catches people, because it is not on any moving checklist and nobody at the closing table mentions it. El Dorado County requires every dog four months or older to be licensed, and a dog arriving from somewhere else has thirty days to be on the county's books. A California license from another county does not carry over on its own. It has to be transferred, inside the same thirty days.

Figures and rules are the county's, current as of September 2026. They change, so check the county's pet licensing page before you rely on a number.

The two weeks before.

• Get the vet records in your hand, not in a portal. A PDF on your phone is fine until you are standing at a counter with no signal. Ask for a printed rabies certificate and a printed summary.
• Update the microchip before you move, not after. The chip is registered to an address and a phone number, and the week you are least reachable is the week a dog is most likely to bolt. Do it while you still have a calm evening.
• Find the new vet before you need one. Ring them and ask whether they are taking new patients, because several out here are not. Have the records sent across in advance.
• Let the crate or the bed be out and normal for two weeks. If the only time a crate appears is moving day, the crate becomes the bad thing rather than the safe thing.
• Photograph your dog. Front on and side on, this month, with whatever collar they will actually be wearing. If you need it, you will need it fast.

Moving day itself.

The single biggest risk on a moving day is the front door. It stands open for six hours while strangers carry furniture through it, and a dog who has never run in their life will run.

• The dog should not be in the house. Day care, a friend, a boarding kennel, or the back of one closed room with a sign on the door and a person who knows they are in there. A closed room is the minimum, not the plan.
• Collar and tag on, all day. Even the dog who never wears one at home.
• Feed light in the morning. A stressed dog and a full stomach in a hot car is an unhappy afternoon.
• Pack the dog's bag last and unpack it first. Food, bowls, water, medication, the bed, one toy that smells of the old house, and a towel. If it goes on the van it is gone until Thursday.

The first three days.

Do the boring things first and the settling takes care of itself.

• Walk the fence line before the dog does. Gate latches, the gap behind the shed, the spot where the ground has fallen away under the panel. Do it yourself, slowly, the first hour.
• Out here, check the foxtails. Dry grass seeds that work their way into paws, ears and noses, and they are everywhere on this side of Sacramento by early summer. A dry corner of an unloved yard is the classic place to pick one up.
• Set one room up the way the old house was. Same bed, same corner, same bowls. One familiar room beats a whole unfamiliar house.
• Keep the walks short and the same for a week. Same route, same time. A dog learns the way home by repetition, not by exploring.
• Coyotes are real up the hill. Cameron Park, Shingle Springs and the edges of El Dorado Hills all back onto open ground. Small dogs are not left out after dusk, and the fence that keeps a dog in does not necessarily keep anything out.

Somewhere to let them off the lead.

Three I can vouch for, with the details from the people who run them rather than from a directory.

What to look at in a house, if you have a dog.

Nobody puts this on a listing sheet, so it gets decided by accident. These are the things I walk a client round to look at when there is a dog in the family.

• The fence, honestly. Height at the lowest point rather than the highest, what the gate latches are, and whether the ground falls away anywhere along it. A four foot fence on a slope is a two foot fence at one end.
• The HOA's actual pet rules. Not the summary on the website. Several communities out here have weight limits, number limits or breed language buried in the CC&Rs, and the time to read that is before you are in contract, not after. Ask me for the CC&Rs and I will find the clause.
• Shade in the yard, in August. A west-facing yard with no tree is unusable from two until seven for four months of the year. Look at where the shade actually falls, not at the lawn.
• The pool fence, if there is a pool. Pool safety fencing is written for children and it does not always stop a determined dog. Check the gap at the bottom.
• Which side the neighbor's dog is on. Two dogs either side of a wooden fence is either a friendship or two years of barking, and you can usually tell inside five minutes of standing in the yard.
• The floors. Polished hardwood looks wonderful and an older dog with bad hips cannot stand up on it. Runners solve it, but you should know before you are choosing between two houses.