Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surgery. Show all posts

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Doggie snowcones

Published on Sunday, February 14, 2010 in ,

Can you believe this dog? He's gone through more surgeries than Sheila! Ok, not really even close. But he's gonna catch up quickly at this rate. Honestly, we think he's done now. This one was planned in advance, like the last one, so nothing out of the ordinary is wrong. Some people wait until their pup is nearly 1 year old to get neutered, but with Wolfie's heart problem, they suggested we get him cut short (hahah, get it, short = early). Yeah, poor guy. But also this was a good opportunity to get his ear fixed. We'll never know exactly what happened with his ear, but the best guess the experts gave us was that Wolfie had some kind of birth defect that caused blood vessels to burst in his ear, which caused the cartilage to splinter into different pieces and grow all wonky. That's the best word we've found to describe it - wonky! So the wonderful doctors at Iowa State Veterinary hospital fixed him right up.


They weren't very worried about the procedures themselves, because these are fairly basic things that they do often, but they were more worried about Wolfie's heart, which was just fixed. and his strange reaction to the anesthesia and disinfectant last time. But, everything went off without a hitch, and 2 days later, our Wolfie came home with a nice big e-collar and 4 more scars. His new name is Frankie (as in frankestein). The best thing about Wolfie (besides being super cute and very well behaved) is that he is unbelievable tolerant of all this poking, prodding, and cutting. He comes out of these surgeries, and 24 hours later he's ready to run. They love him over at Iowa State. Actually, they said that they like him so much, that if he has another surgery, they're going to name a wing after him (is that because we bought it?)

The worst part of this whole thing, honestly, is that Wolfie wants to play so badly, but he can't because he'd probably rip his sutures right out. When he and Winnie get into it, they play hard! Seriously, the neighbors get scared =) We've had to keep him in his crate most of the time. But he's a good kid, and we let him out on good behavior. His favorite "entertain myself" game is to go outside (works best in fresh snow) and scoop a bunch of snow into his e-collar, and make a little Wolfie snowcone. When he comes inside, he can spend the next hour licking it clean. A side effect of this is that when he does a #2, and he goes to sniff his product like any good male would do, he sometimes makes a poop flavored snowcone. Guess who gets to clean that out!? Oh, he's worth it! He's the best damn dog in the world (together with his sister)!

Posted by Drink at Sunday, February 14, 2010 0 comments
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Under the knife

Published on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 in ,


Wolfie had surgery last week on 1/6, and it was a complete success! You might have read in my previous post that he was discovered to have a PDA (patent ductus arteriosis), which is a duct in the heart that is supposed to close when you are born into the world. Wolfie's was not, and the concern was that if we didn't close it, he could suffer the same fate as all Wolfies (the ones that we know anyhow). The surgery took just a few hours to insert a device through the femoral artery to close the hole from each side, and he recovered gently at Iowa State Veterinary Hospital. They are a top notch facility, certainly the best in the state, and Wolfie was in good hands. I would mention his doctor's name, except I don't have his permission, so I'll only mention it in person, if anyone needs a cardiac referral. It's interesting, treating our pets almost as humans, and I know some people will disagree, but can you be surprised really? They are a part of the family unit. And Wolfie 2.0 has stolen our hearts just as much as Winnie and Wolfie 1.


A hilarious side effect of the surgery was bringing Wolfie home from Iowa State. He scared the crap out of Winnie, who went running into the corner behind the piano (her favorite "don't bother me" spot), only to emerge when Wolfie was out of the room. I laughed myself silly watching Wolfie try to play and watching Winnie run away full speed! So Wolfman is resting, against his will, for the next couple weeks, just to make sure nothing comes undone. It should be an interesting couple of weeks! I'll be glad when this is all done.... and Sheila missed all the fun!!!

Posted by Drink at Tuesday, January 12, 2010 0 comments
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Wholey heart defect!

Published on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 in ,

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!

Posted by Drink at Tuesday, December 01, 2009 0 comments
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