Think in threes: 3 days, 3 weeks, 30 days
Shelter workers use a "3-3-3" rule for rescued dogs, and it maps almost perfectly onto international relocation: roughly three days of decompression (sleeping, hiding, odd appetite), three weeks of learning the new routine, and about three months before the new place is fully "home." Your dog just crossed an ocean in a crate, possibly spent a few days in quarantine, and now lives in a city that smells like nothing it has ever met. Expecting day-one normalcy is the main mistake owners make.
Days 1–3: decompression
- Set up the flight crate first. It smells like home and like your dog. Open door, familiar bedding, in a quiet corner — it's the one known object in an unknown world.
- Keep the world small. One room, then the apartment, then the block. No dog parks, no visitors, no grand tours of Taipei in week one.
- Feed the food that flew with you and transition to local brands over a week or two, later. New water and jet lag are enough for one stomach.
- Expect weird. Skipped meals, pacing, over-sleeping and clinginess are all normal for 72 hours. What isn't: no water intake for a day, repeated vomiting, or labored breathing — that's a vet visit, not a wait.
Weeks 2–4: learning Taipei
Taipei is a genuinely good dog city, but it plays by its own rules:
| Taipei reality | How to handle it |
|---|---|
| Apartment living, little or no yard | Walks become the whole exercise budget — schedule two or three real ones daily. Elevator etiquette (sit, short leash) earns you neighborly goodwill fast. |
| Heat and humidity most of the year | Walk early and late; pavement in July burns paws by mid-morning. Water on every outing longer than 20 minutes. |
| Dense, loud streets — scooters everywhere | Keep the leash short near curbs for the first month; scooter swarms are the sound most foreign dogs need longest to accept. |
| Riverside park network | The payoff: kilometres of car-free riverside trails and fenced dog runs along the Tamsui, Keelung and Xindian rivers. This is where Taipei dogs actually run. |
| Transit rules | On the MRT, dogs travel in enclosed carriers (assistance dogs excepted) — fine for small dogs, plan taxis or pet-taxi services for big ones. |
Week three is also the right time for a get-acquainted visit at a local vet — not because anything's wrong, but so the clinic knows your dog before the first 2 a.m. emergency. Taipei has excellent, largely English-friendly veterinary care, including 24-hour hospitals; our pet-friendly Taipei guide lists where to start.
The one tool that fixes most problems: routine
Still on the other side of the move? Settling in goes better when the journey itself was calm — start with crate training and the import checklist, or let us run the whole journey so your energy is saved for the first riverside walk.
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Everything in this article is work 886JetPet does daily on the Taiwan corridor — the paperwork, the calendar, the airline, the arrival. One quote, one team, door to door.