I was born to be someone with two passports, but, much to my horror, I was literally born to two Americans. I have rewritten that wrong of sorts with my next of kin: my dog Joan, who has an EU dog passport.

Joan was not always a global citizen. Like all good Horatio Alger types, she was born in somewhat less than ideal circumstances. The details are fuzzy, but a concerned neighbor reported her original owners to New York City’s animal health and she was brought, as a one-year-old, to a Brooklyn shelter, where she was underweight and had pneumonia. A text from a friend alerted me to an adorable white and brown piebald English bulldog and I adopted her the next day.

Early into our life together—she is now 11—I wanted to show her where I came from, and that was California. She was a natural traveler. The first time she was on a plane, she slept at my feet and then I fell asleep, only to wake up from my nap to find her cradled in the arms of the stranger sitting next to me who was taking selfies with her for his wife. In San Francisco and L.A, she met my parents, swam in the Pacific, accompanied me to a Culver City meeting with a film producer, and stayed at the Sunset Tower. We went to dog parks where wild fennel grew and and farmers markets where she sampled bison jerky.

Courtesy Marisa Meltzer When writer Marisa Meltzer moved to France, it wasn

I have basically always had dogs, except for four years in college, so friends often ask me for advice on getting their first. My main advice is to get a dog that suits your lifestyle. Since mine involves wanting to hang out at restaurants, sleep, meander around boutiques, Joan is the perfect match for me because she likes all of that plus the attention she gets. She is not an anxious dog, and I’m not even someone with separation anxiety. I like boarding her at a pet camp called Town and Country (unrelated but wonderful coincidence) in New Hampshire when I travel.

But then I was faced with a choice. My building in New York was being sold, and, at the same time, I needed to go to Paris for a few months for work. I put all my belongings into storage and decided to deal with an apartment hunt when I returned. But the idea of leaving Joan with a dogsitter for a few months made me sad. Paris is a city of jaded urbanites and their spoiled pets. That’s me, that’s us, and that’s when I decided Joan needed to move to Paris with me.

I booked an appointment a couple months before I left with my vet. She explained that Joan needed to have a chip, to be caught up on her vaccines, primarily rabies, and then within 10 days of flying to Paris, we would have to go back, get her tested for rabies, and they would submit a bunch of paperwork to the USDA showing that she was fine to travel. The USDA would sign it, stamp it, and overnight it all to me to travel with. It cost a few hundred dollars for the appointments, vaccines, and the approval process. Honestly the most stressful part was just making sure the signed papers wouldn’t get lost in the mail and it would make it to me before I had to leave for Newark airport. Luckily they were delivered on time and I packed them along with my own passport for the flight.

Courtesy Marisa Meltzer Joan Meltzer, unimpressed by the Eiffel Tower, surveys her kingdom.

Joan had been to airports several times by the time we boarded our Paris flight, but I was a little bit nervous that some element of her travel papers would be missing and we’d be denied entry. We weren’t. The La Compagnie employee who checked us in scanned in her papers and soon enough she was being offered a small plate of bavette for her own meal on the flight. A gay couple from the U.S. who had recently bought a home in Bordeaux became her friends for the flight—they even invited her to visit (not sure if I was included or it was not a plus-one scenario).

France is of course known for its unbeatable bureaucracy so I was, again, prepared for something to go wrong in customs. Instead a jolly middle-aged woman said, “elle est magnifique” and waved us through. Et voilà, Joan got in a taxi and was living in France.

Our mornings were spent walking along the Seine or learning byzantine facts at the dog park, like how all purebred dogs in France are required to have legal names that begin in the same letter for each year. So for example, if your dog was born in 2019, its name would have to begin with the letter P. It was Christmas and at a bourgeois pet store in Passy in the 16th, Joan got an organic dog treat advent calendar. We went to the flea market on Sundays and she became a regular at the Chanel flagship on rue Cambon where they brought her water in logo bowls. Joan even made a new best friend, an English bulldog named Edward whose family owns the Michelin starred restaurant Comice.

Courtesy Marisa Meltzer Upper East Sider Joan Meltzer made herself at home during a trip to Paris and became a regular at L

My research and sublet was up and I had to return home to New York. If you have been in a foreign country for a certain amount of time—usually longer than a month, but it depends on the country, so call the local American embassy—you have to show proof of a rabies-free dog via a local vet. A friend recommended her Isabel Marant-wearing vet in the 16th. She gave Joan her test, many treats, and one more thing: a blue EU passport for dogs where she recorded it all. If we did another long Parisian sojourn, her passport meant she didn’t have to go back to the vet until her rabies vaccine needed to be updated. Basically, it was a status symbol.

We moved back to Manhattan where Joan became an Upper East Sider. But I missed Paris and I suspected Joan missed gnawing on day-old baguettes and being a regular upstairs at L’Avenue. So I brought her for a 10-day vacation a year later. Now that she’s a world traveler I am ready to rack up passport stamps for us both. August in Milan followed by Labor Day in Stockholm? Eurostar to London? We’re making the most of this dual citizenship.