Hi, I wanted to say thank you all for the information. It's been a while since I posted this and to be honest, I forgot about it, but I did want to give you all my feedback on the experience I had traveling with my dog to the USA and back to Switzerland. We traveled by way of air Canada which made our trip possible.
It is a terribly frustrating process and I spent a great deal of time on the phone with airlines, the USDA, the federal veterinary office, canadian border authorities (of some sort), and many others who I can't even remember. It's all hectic and many people couldn't even seem to answer my questions, pitching me off to someone else equally as confused!
But here it is: You can't fly direct to the USA with an animal (needing a rabies shot) unless they have had the rabies vaccination for 30 days prior to flying. Switzerland is a low risk country for rabies (unless that has changed by now) so if you fly your animal in, which is allowed, they have to be quarantined for the remainder of the thirty days. I understand that could be as easy as signing a release stating you will keep the dog on house arrest in your home basically. There is paperwork for this which you can easily obtain before your flight online.
To bypass this we flew into Canada with air Canada and she was under my seat. Canadian rules state that a dog must have a rabies shot, that's all, no 30 day waiting period. And, in Canada you go through the process of clearing into the US. It was an overnight layover which gave us all a chance to take a break and check into a hotel.
From Canada we flew to a small airport in Virginia, no customs or anything to deal with, and all was good!
Getting prepared for the flight back was the problem. She had to fly as checked luggage. She's a tough little rascal and seemed to have no problems at all, but we had to change our airport since the airlines screwed up and booked us on a tiny plane for our short hop to the major airport, for our return trip. The little plane couldn't take a pet in the cargo hold. Ok we fixed that, rented a car, and drove three and a half hours to a large airport.
There seemed to be a lot of confusion with the airline, swiss customs, and the veterinarians, about what the dog actually needed in terms of paperwork to fly from US to Switzerland. We were finally told to get a health certificate from the vet then take it to USDA office to get it stamped....this was horribly annoying and costly but we did it.
We arrived at the airport in Baltimore with the health certificate and had to tell them ourselves to actually attach it to the crate...they didn't even know what it was. Basically, they just wanted a signed note from the veterinarian stating the dog was in good health to fly.
We arrived in Switzerland (geneva), collected our happy little pooch at the luggage drop off and spoke with a customs agent to make sure all was clear. No fee, they didn't even want to look at the paperwork, and told us it was unnecessary.
SO basically, I feel that getting the health certificated made by the vet, setting up the appointment with the USDA, and driving the hour there to get it stamped, while having to deal with the very rude office secretaries was pointless and a waste of time and money!
Anyhow, this is what I now know...I am still confused but we made it through, no problems at least!