We took Wolfie to the Iowa State vet clinic today to get tested, and it was actually good news (relatively). We already knew he had a heart condition, but we didn't know what it was. Also Sheila was really concerned about his right eye, which seems smaller and more closed than his left eye, and his ear which was covering his eye. We didn't want him to have trouble seeing at such a young age, or there is no way he could keep up with Winnie. I was beginning to wonder why kept missing whenever he tried to hump a visitor (just kidding).
The verdict was that he has a PDA (patent ductus arteriosus). The doctors in the audience will already know what this means. For the rest of you, this means he has a duct that all babies (human and canine) have that's supposed to close shortly after birth. Sometimes it doesn't close, like with Wolfie. Luckily, there's a simple procedure they can do, that also works on dogs, and that's what we're going to have done on Jan 6th. They'll use a device to block the hole on each side of the duct and effectively fix the heart. The vet thinks that as long as Wolfie is a house dog, he'll live a long and happy life. I guess my aspirations of having Wolfie carry me to the top of Mt Everest are shot (and I was so looking forward to that).
I had several people ask me about pet insurance, saying we should look into it to help pay for the cost. And to interject for a minute, it didn't even cross our mind not to get this procedure done (I won't mention how much it costs). Wolfie's a part of our family now, I don't care if he's a dog. Yes, it helps that we don't have children =) Anyway, turns out pet insurance has the same pre-exisisting conditons that human insurance does, so even if we wanted to get it, we couldn't! Poor Wolfman, he's so young to have so many problems, but most likely, everything's going to be fine!
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