Bringing Your Dog or Cat Into Malaysia: The Permit and Quarantine Rules

Your flight is booked, your boxes are packed, and then it hits you: what about the dog. In Malaysia, a pet doesn’t just ride along in the cargo hold — it needs a permit that’s approved before it leaves the ground, a microchip that meets a specific ISO standard, and quite possibly a week or more in quarantine before you get it back.

The rules sit across two agencies. The Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) — Jabatan Perkhidmatan Veterinar — writes the biosecurity conditions: age, vaccination, health certification, quarantine length. The Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services (MAQIS) is who actually issues the import permit and runs the quarantine stations. In practice, you deal mostly with MAQIS.

What has to be true before the animal travels

Four conditions apply to every dog or cat, regardless of origin:

• Age — not less than 3 months old at the time of import.
• Microchip — identified with an ISO 11784/11785-compliant microchip.
• Vaccination — rabies-vaccinated with an approved vaccine before export, plus other core vaccines within the 12 months prior, with a valid vaccination record or pet passport.
• Health certificate — a Veterinary Health Certificate from the exporting country’s own government veterinary authority, confirming the animal was examined and found healthy within 7 days immediately before export, that no rabies case had occurred in that country in the preceding 6 months, and that the animal itself had not been imported into that country in the preceding 6 months.

The import permit itself has to be in hand — applied for through MAQIS’s e-Permit system, after registering in its SPEED system — before the animal actually departs. Getting a health certificate ready and then discovering the permit is still pending is one of the more common ways this trips people up.

Quarantine depends on where the pet is coming from

DVS maintains a list of “scheduled” countries — as of a December 2025 update, this includes the United Kingdom, Ireland, Northern Ireland, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, Brunei, Singapore, and a set of mostly European states (Greece, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, Malta, Slovenia, Estonia, Bahrain, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Lithuania). Pets arriving from these countries can bypass quarantine when their health status and documentation are complete.

Origin	Quarantine
Scheduled country, documents complete	May be waived
Non-scheduled country	Minimum 7 days at a MAQIS Animal Quarantine Station (SKH)
Sarawak → Peninsular Malaysia	14 days
Sabah → Peninsular Malaysia	None

Even the minimum 7-day stay isn’t automatically the ceiling — DVS regulations allow quarantine to be extended up to 6 months on a case-by-case risk assessment if something about the animal’s health or paperwork doesn’t check out. Quarantine space at an SKH must be booked ahead (MAQIS advises around 14 days before import, with a non-refundable deposit), and that booking confirmation number feeds into the e-Permit application itself — you can’t get the permit without it. Quarantine and permit fees are charged under the Malaysian Quarantine and Inspection Services (Fees and Charges) Regulations 2013.

Breed matters — for dogs

Cats face no breed restriction beyond the general conditions above. Dogs do:

• Restricted breeds (need written approval from the MAQIS Director-General before applying for the import permit, plus a pedigree certificate, matching microchip record, and a written declaration that the dog is a personal pet, kept secured and leashed/muzzled in public): Bull Mastiff, Bull Terrier, Doberman, German Shepherd/Alsatian (including Belgian Shepherd and East European Shepherd), Perro de Presa Canario, and Rottweiler.
• Banned breeds — not importable at all: Akita, American Bulldog, Dogo Argentino, Fila Braziliero, Japanese Tosa, Neapolitan Mastiff, and Pit Bull-type dogs (American Pit Bull, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Staffordshire Bull Terrier).

Common mistakes

• Applying for the permit after booking flights. The permit must be issued before the animal leaves the origin country — it isn’t something you sort out on arrival.
• Assuming a “scheduled country” pet skips quarantine automatically. The exemption is conditional on complete documentation and a clean health check; incomplete paperwork can still mean quarantine.
• Getting the health certificate too early. It has to certify examination within 7 days of export — done too far ahead, it won’t satisfy the requirement.
• Not checking the breed list before adopting or buying abroad. A banned breed cannot enter Malaysia under any circumstances, permit or not.

What’s next

Confirm your pet’s origin country against DVS’s current scheduled-country list, register in MAQIS’s SPEED system early, and book quarantine space well before you need the e-Permit — the two are linked, and neither moves fast if the other is missing. If your dog falls into a restricted breed, start the Director-General approval process first, since it has to be cleared before the import permit application even opens.

If you’re relocating the whole household on an Employment Pass, sort out dependants’ passes on the same timeline — pet quarantine dates and family pass approvals rarely land in the same week by accident.