“Come here for a second, Russ, you have to see this …”

En route from Racine, Wisconsin, to Jacksonville, Florida, where I had accepted the call to pastor an interdenominational church, we stopped to pick up some cat food for the kitty we’d rescued.

“What do you want to show me?” Russ asked, his hands holding catnip and toys for our three-day drive from the upper Midwest to the lower Southeast.

“Look!” I pointed at a small white puppy playing alone in a kennel crate, rolling over repeatedly and making the funniest faces.

“Cute,” Russ contributed.

“Can we ask to see him in one of the cubicles and play with him a bit? The dog is a Miniature Schnauzer. Have you ever seen a white one?”

“But we’ve got a three-day drive ahead of us,” Russ interjected. “Besides, it’s a male.”

We’d never had a male dog, always assuming females were friendlier, easier to train, more obedient and loyal.

(You know what’s said about ass-u-me!)

Discretion being the lesser part of valor when it comes to canines in our lives, within 30 minutes the puppy had become the newest member of our family … accompanied by bags filled with food, toys, and treats.

The little boy and I bonded during our drive to the sunshine state, me driving and he lounging comfortably on the rented Chevy Tahoe’s massive center console. Russ had the cat in his car, growling at him.

We named our new family member Jackson – Jax for short – in respect to our Florida destination. It was there that he’d have his first bath, his first grooming, his first set of rabies and distemper shots, his first taste of a poison (“Comfortis”) pill his sensitive system couldn’t quite handle to combat the ferocious fleas and ubiquitous bugs – flying, crawling, hiding, biting – inhabiting the same space that we did.

Walking him around our block in the Springfield area where we lived, I would sometimes encounter a gentleman walking his two dogs: a tiny Yorkshire and a larger black one that looked like another terrier.

“Is that a Scottie?” I asked.

“No. She’s a black Schnauzer.”

“I’ve never seen a black Schnauzer …”

“And I’ve never met a white one!” he said.

Jackson is the smartest, most sensitive, and affectionate dog we’d ever adopted. Yes, males can be quite loving. Still, when the cat had passed on, we decided to find Jax a female companion.

# # # # #

The chance of finding any Schnauzers in the classified ads of our local back-home-in-Virginia newspaper was next to nil. Yet, there was the ad: “Miniature Schnauzers. Home-raised. Parents on premises …”

“Should we call?” I asked Russ.

No answer was needed.

“Hi, I’m calling about your newspaper ad for Miniature Schnauzers,” I began when the phone was answered. “We’re looking for something very specific: a sweet black female. I don’t suppose you have one?”

“Actually, we do. Two pups are left: a black bitch and a salt-and-pepper male, the runt of the litter. Want to see them?”

“We’ll be right there,” I informed the pets’ surrogate parents. Looking at Russ, I then matter-of-factly stated, “You know what this means.”

The black girl was exactly what we’d hoped for; but the little silver and gray boy was totally unexpected: a bundle of joy that jumped into our laps, licked our throats, and rolled over for his belly to be rubbed. Russ shot me a look that clearly declared, “We’re not leaving with one dog. Either both of them are coming home with us, or neither will.”

That’s how we came to have three dogs – the “children,” as we refer to them – who totally have changed our lives.

# # # # #

If and when you decide to make a major move, to another country across the great pond, in addition to your own visa requirements, you need to ensure that all of your pets’ paperwork is properly presented. With pets originating in the European Union, you get official pet passports that enable them to cross borders. For pets coming into the EU from the USA, you work with your veterinarian and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to complete comparable documents, reasonable facsimiles.

Before all this happens, however, you must deal with the airlines if you won’t allow your pets to be transported in the plane’s cargo hold.

Because of disabilities, physicians qualified our dogs as Emotional Support Animals to fly with us in the cabins of three American Airlines’ flights—between Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Madrid, Spain. Upon landing in Madrid, authorities hardly glanced at all the details and data included on the 11-page document. They simply scanned the spots where each of the dogs had a microchip inserted and confirmed their numbers matched the papers.

The person handling our rental car warned us that, in Spain and Portugal, dogs and cats must be “restrained” in vehicles, either by keeping them in their carriers or affixing them to the seat belt locks through a simple device where one side connects to their collars, the other to the seat belt buckles. Amazon sells a set for about ten dollars.

Somewhat comforted to find great vets who speak English, you make an appointment and bring your pets in for exams – “consultations” – where you spend over an hour together and more than €200 … which not only includes thorough exams, but eight-month collars to guard against fleas, ticks, and the dreaded Leishmaniasis, more medicine to combat it and yet more medicine to guard against heart worms.

“You must realize,” the vet warns, “that dogs and cats from other countries (i.e., the USA) are more susceptible to disease, mosquito bites, and attacks.” In a plastic bag are the medicines, dosages and schedules they’re to be given, brochures, and other paraphernalia; you’re handed directly three official pet passports (included in the fees), enabling your dogs or cats to travel between EU countries.

In exchange, you hand over your Multibanco card and cringe when the ticket prints out a receipt for two hundred and eight euros, equal to about US $242.00. Then you remember how much time the vet has spent with you and your three pooches; all the medications, pills, and elixirs you’ve received to take home; the three, 3-in-1 combination vaccines protecting your cherished ones against Bordetella bacteria, Canine Parainfluenza virus, and Adenovirus Type 2. How much would all that have cost you in the USA? Undoubtedly, a heck of a lot more!

And when the vet hands you the itemized “factura” (invoice), you learn that professional health care for your pets is tax-deductible here.

# # # # #

Pet passports in hand, you and your pets now need licenses from your local junta. “You will want to have them,” your veterinarian advises, since without licenses, the police can come and take away your pets if people make complaints.”

Each of our dogs gets a license. Just € 10 for the first year—for all three, less in following years. We leave with the distinguished documents, words offset by seals and stamps and signed by the junta’s president.

Just when we think there won’t be anything else the dogs need, the devil pays a house call: one, then the others, fall sick. We grieve their pain, discomfort, and suffering, even as we curse the ceaseless messes everywhere. So, we make another appointment with the vet.

This time we bring just Jax, as he’s the only one sick at the moment. Again, we’re impressed by the thoroughness of care and concern shown by our dog’s doctors: a physical exam … x-rays to ensure there’s no “foreign” matter in his intestines (or other internal parts) … nearly an hour’s worth of IV solution to replenish the liquids lost during his “accidents” and absence of appetite … antibiotics by injection … pills, antibiotics plus probiotics to help him heal at home … advice to boil a skinless breast of chicken and some rice, feeding him in small doses.

The veterinarian hands us two little bags of pills and her card with the practice’s 24-hour emergency line, then jots down her own personal phone number on it, too. “If Jax isn’t improving in 24 hours – or if he has any more problems – call and bring him back tomorrow,” she said.

Ninety-four euros. The bill for all that attention!

Jax began to improve almost immediately. But the two littles ones quickly came down with the same symptoms. We concluded the problem was food poisoning, not from something they’d picked up in the streets from well-meaning people who’d leave bones and gristle for the town’s homeless animals. No, the problem was with their food.

We’d purchased the best food available– dry and canned – in a shop similar to Fleet & Farm, since everything in the supermarkets has cereal as a primary ingredient and far too much fat for dogs who suffer from pancreatitis.

Forcing them to swallow their pills, followed by feeding them the boiled chicken and rice, all three quickly regained their health. Portuguese friends recommended a new pet supply shop that had just opened, where we purchased excellent low-fat and grain-free dry food: just two small bags (2-3 kgs), along with four cans of low-fat, “all-natural” food without any additives—turkey with raspberry, chicken with pineapple, chicken with apple, and chicken fillets.

With a new customer discount, our bill totaled € 33—almost US $40.

Whether standard, off-the-shelf supermarket brands heavy with fillers, or highly nutritious specialty foods found only in limited locations, pet foods are among those daily breads (or breeds) that can cost more here in Spain and Portugal than in the USA.

Even so, the money is well spent on health care for our families.

Shared here are personal observations, experiences, and happenstance that actually occurred to us as we moved from the USA to begin a new life in Portugal and Spain. Collected and compiled in EXPAT: Leaving the USA for Good, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions from Amazon and most online booksellers.

We know people who take trips to fabulous places by air, sea, and land. Some of them have been almost everywhere the world wantons, seeking its seven wonders and exploring places far from the beaten track.

For them, it’s one exciting trip after another, going to places most of us only imagine and dream about, courtesy of TV’s travel channels and the worldwide web.

What wonderful opportunities to be strangers in strange lands, to get away – truly away – for the vacation of a lifetime (or two).

We, however, have chosen another path … towards destinations that many simply cannot fathom: While enjoying periodic cruises, shopping for stuff purchased impulsively on a tourist’s whim, and seeing how other people live (albeit from an American perspective), we prefer to return – year after year – to the same two places: a Spanish town where we’ve spent a month unwinding after nearly a year’s worth of frustrations and, a small village in Portugal where dealing with frustrations occupied much of our time. More recently, we added another small property in Portugal–this one is on the Spanish border by Badajoz.

Sometimes, if we could manage it, we made more than one trip to these places … spending an additional ten days to two weeks there the same year.

I not only got to speak with the natives, I spoke as the natives do … picking up new slang and jargon, along with rapid fluency. Where and when I couldn’t converse, I learned how to communicate.

For a month, we moved around with the locals—either walking a lot or driving cars with clutches that required us (sometimes) to pull up the emergency brake when forced to stop and then start again in the middle of a steep hill, with traffic honking behind us. For a month, we ingested different kinds of foods and “delicacies” (pig jowls, snippets of bull tails, pizza made with unusual ingredients, linings of cow stomachs, etc.). And, for a month, we tried not to eat three meals daily – breakfast, lunch, and dinner – at our “normal” times: morning, noon, and (very) early evening … but, instead, to consume smaller “tapas” portions in the mid-afternoon and evenings (although we preferred to eat at 7:00 PM, not 10:00 PM).

But the biggest difference, we’d found, between being travelers passing through and living as part-time residents was learning to accept that other people and cultures tend to do things differently than we do … which is perfectly all right.

Take patience, for instance—something I am sorely lacking.

In Iberia, we may wait at the bank for an hour or more while those ahead of us receive “personalized service” from customer reps. We had an 11:30 appointment at the Notario (the ultimate “lawyer’s lawyer” in many EU nations), only to be seen an hour later than scheduled because the Notario’s attention had been diverted by other matters. We sat in our attorney’s office for much longer than planned because – like our insurance agent – he takes the time (as much as needed) to be interrupted by telephone calls, other people coming into the office “just to ask a question,” and whatever business our agents can conduct while we’re sitting there with them.

We have come to understand that when contractors tell us they’ll be here at 10:00 but don’t show up until 11:30 – and then take a two-hour lunch – before returning and working until 19:00 or 20:00, it’s not because they’re lazy or taking advantage … it’s because the hands of a clock don’t control them. They move to the beat of different drummers.

Ultimately it’s been good for us, learning to live in another culture that’s different from our norm, and that a “mañana mentality,” once adjusted to and accommodating it, indeed can be healthy.

In 2017, we no longer took month-long “vacations” to our Spanish town and village in Portugal. We stayed. We became residents, if not citizens, of international oases where we’d passed snippets of our lives. For lots of reasons – practical and political – we decided to make Portugal and Spain our home. 

We have come to understand that we’re no longer wayfarers or tourists, but rooted residents, part and parcel of places welcoming us to new homelands and communities.

Shared here are personal observations, experiences, and happenstance that actually occurred to us as we moved from the USA to begin a new life in Portugal and Spain. Collected and compiled in EXPAT: Leaving the USA for Good, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions from Amazon and most online booksellers.

“Get going, already,” motioned the young couple who had purchased our house in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, and were waiting, eagerly, for us to depart from what was now to be their new home.

In addition to our house, they had bought a good deal of our furniture … as well as my favorite toy, an all-wheel drive Jaguar.

We had disposed of most of our possessions and keepsakes.

Except for the contents of one 8 x 8 x 20 foot shipping container filled with an assortment of “household goods” and our beloved artwork, collected and curated together over 25+ years together (plus not too few U-Haul “wardrobe” boxes filled with blankets, comforters, bed linens, towels, and other household goods that we’d purchased for donation to the needy in Portugal–especially victims of the fires), everything else we owned, including Russ’s Jeep Grand Cherokee, had been sold, gifted to loved ones, or donated to nonprofit charities.

Turning back one last time to wave a final good-bye, I realized that we had divested much if not most of the content comprising our life in the United States, as we prepared to make the one-way journey to Portugal with our three dogs, three large suitcases, and two allotted carry-on bags containing computers, passports, and other essentials.

Over the past ten years, we had been fortunate and privileged to own “vacation bolts” in Spain and/or Portugal, and to travel there once or twice annually, enjoying a month to six weeks during each visit.

But, this time would be different.

It wasn’t a visit. We’d be staying, not returning.

One-way, not round-trip, tickets.

This was the first time we were traveling with our dogs, three miniature schnauzers, who’d accompany us in the cabin on the three flights taking us to our new home: Green Bay > Chicago, Chicago > Philadelphia, and Philadelphia > Madrid (where we would rent a car large enough to transport our family and assorted paraphernalia on the four-hour drive to our property in Lousa, a village of 600 on the outskirts of Castelo Branco).

Endlessly, we had talked about living in Europe alongside other the expats and immigrants – from the UK and the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, Sweden and elsewhere – who had become part and parcel of our family and circle of friends in Spain and, later, in Portugal.

But they were European Union nationals. Different rules applied to them than applied to us. Even the Brits, though fearful of potential consequences their “Brexit” might cause, were convinced they would never be forced to leave the countries to which they had emigrated. Certainly, protections and provisions would be included in the terms and conditions negotiated during the UK’s exit from the EU.

For our part, we loved our lifestyle in Spain and Portugal. Life was easier (or easy-going) and slower there. Calmer and more tranquil. Far cheaper, too. And healthier. We walked rather than drove most days; typically, we ate less but healthier; and we drank far more red wine. As a “mañana mentality” took hold, we felt far less stressed and much more liberated. All in all, our quality of life greatly surpassed our cost of living.

Yet …

Visits and vacations are different from full-time living and residence. So, we dawdled, too comfortable in our intimacies and surroundings to actually make such a major move.

Perhaps it was the regular, routine Social Security payments I had worked a lifetime to earn. More probably, however, the political changes – first subtle, then crassly overt – which had changed the climate of our country, provided the real motivation for us to get going and relocate.

Shared here are personal observations, experiences, and happenstance that actually occurred to us as we moved from the USA to begin a new life in Portugal and Spain. Collected and compiled in EXPAT: Leaving the USA for Good, the book is available in hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions from Amazon and most online booksellers.