Showing posts with label wolfie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wolfie. 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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Merry Christmas!

Published on Thursday, December 24, 2009 in , , , ,

I thought I'd repost our Christmas Letter here for posterity.


Another wild and crazy year for this branch of the Drnec family: Tumultuous, fortuitous, studious, industrious, and at times frivolous and capricious!

A couple additions enhanced our clan this year, of the small and furry kind. “Congratulations! It’s…a puppy!” Actually, it’s 3 puppies. Last Christmas, we fell in love with Granny’s puppy, Maggie, a Christmas present from Uncle Billy. U. Billy had just adopted Buddy a few weeks prior. We added Wolfgang (Wolfie), The First, to our family in January, a 9 week old German Shepherd. In April, we added Winifred (Winnie) to the family to give Wolfie I a playmate. They were the best of friends, and great companions to us, until Wolfie tragically and unexpectedly died in late July due to an undiagnosed heart defect. We were heartbroken, but adopted Wolfie 2.0 (two-dot-oh) in November to give Winnie her playmate back. Though Winnie, Buddy and Maggie are all confirmed healthy via echocardiogram, Wolfie 2.0 was also found to have a heart defect. Fortunately, it was caught this time, and it’s fixable, and he will have surgery on January 6th, and should live a normal healthy life. We couldn’t be happier, because we couldn’t imagine life without our furry friends (Beeble, the 20 lb. Maine Coone cat, would tend to disagree).

Sheila completed her 2nd year of medical school in May, much to the joy of her husband, who had forgotten what Sheila looked like. However, the first half of summer was reserved for studying for the first Medical Board exam, which Sheila took in July. She passed, much to the joy of Sheila, who was stressed to the max. We took a vacation for a couple weeks (see below), and then Sheila started her rotations. For those who don’t know, the 3rd and 4th years of school consist of a series of 1 month long required and elective rotations in various hospital and clinics. Sheila is based in Des Moines (while other students move to other locations for the year), but has to travel to other locations as there aren’t enough spots for all the students here. So far Sheila has completed ER, internal medicine, surgery, Ob/Gyn, and family practice, and is headed to Nepal for an international rotation right after Christmas. While this time has been hard with the travel to other cities, and us having to be separated, 3rd year is far better than the first two. Sheila is enjoying practicing real medicine (she delivered 11 babies herself in San Antonio, under supervision, of course), and Drink is enjoying seeing her more.

Drink spent much of the year hating his job and trying to fill his spare time with other activities. He was active in SOS (the support organization for medical student spouses), becoming secretary and redesigning their website, and participating in several of the sub groups like the book, tennis, and men’s club. He was officially accepted to University of Iowa’s MBA program and continued pursuing his degree at the local branch in Des Moines in the evenings. Much to the surprise of everyone, his new hobby this year was home brewing after getting a starter kit from Sheila for his birthday. He’s a little disappointed his nickname “Drink” is no longer ironic, but that doesn’t last long past the 2nd tasting of his weekend’s efforts. In October, Drink landed a new job at GeoLearning as a software developer for their Learning Management software (they help many companies deliver online training to their employees). He’s much happier!

This year we traveled to Nepal for a well-deserved vacation after completing half of Medical school. This was both a vacation and a business trip in that we scoped out where Sheila will be living and working for her January rotation. It was really an amazing trip, as we visited many of the same places Sheila had seen when she lived there in 2000/2001, including the site of her motorcycle accident, and some new places. We did a 4 day trek in the Himalayas on the Annapurna trail, we visited the holiest Hindu temple in Nepal, Pashupatinath, we rode elephants in the Chitwan jungle and visited the birthplace of the Lord Buddha. We planned an Everest mountain flight too, but got rained out. We spent a lot of time with our Nepali family, Parvati and Swamijee. They treated us as if we were their own children, and we are forever grateful for their hospitality! We hope they can visit us in the U.S. soon.

We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season! We’re trying to keep warm here in the Midwest, and not get buried in the snow – at least the dogs love it! We know we’ve been out of touch with many friends and family over the past 2 years, and we look forward to post medical school when we can reconnect with everyone.

You can see pictures of our puppies and the Nepal trip online at http://picasaweb.google.com/michaeldrnec, and keep up to date with our life at our websitehttp://www.michaeldrnec.com.

Posted by Drink at Thursday, December 24, 2009 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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Oh no, not again!

Published on Thursday, October 29, 2009 in

I took Wolfie to the vet this week for his first checkup, and got terrible news. He has a heart murmur, just like his namesake Wolfie 1! Say it isn't so little Wolfman! I was extremely upset after leaving the vet. The Doc said it was a grade 3 murmur, and we should definitely be concerned. Given previous information about Wolfie 1, we should definitely be concerned that there is a strong genetic disposition for heart defects.


I spoke to Lisa, our breeder, and let her know. The Doc said I should definitely tell her to take Zeus, the father, out of the pool, because he's obviously spreading undesirable traits. I don't know, I want to believe her when she says that none of her dogs have ever had any problems, and none of her adoptees have ever reported a puppy with a defect like that. We had Winnie, Buddy, and Maggie all tested, all cleared. How is it possible we get 2 males, both named Wolfie, who have the same issue? Did we curse him by naming him in tribute to our beloved, departed dog?

At this point, we're not going to get him tested further. We have to make the decision if we are going to keep Wolfie, or return him. I'm sure we'll keep him - I just can't see returning him. Wolfie has the other problem with his eye, ear, and tail. The vet said his ear was damaged, but it's just the cartilage, it won't impact the functionality of the ear. There's nothing to be done for it but watch and wait. His eye looks like it physically set back farther than the good one, but again doesn't seem to have any functional problems. We are skeptical about that assessment. His tail lost hair due to the fungus, but the nerves are intact, and the hair should grow back.

As my sister said, he's scrappy, but we love him! Hang in there Scrappy!

Posted by Drink at Thursday, October 29, 2009 0 comments
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Wolfie departs, stage left

Published on Friday, July 31, 2009 in


I'm writing this blog in restrospect, so it's going to be a little more aseptic that it would have been if I wrote it at the time. I just wanted to capture the story, and almost make it seem like I posted it at the time. Here it goes.

This is the saddest of days for us... our dear Wolfgang has left us at the early age of 8 months old. We just got back from Nepal, literally, and we find out that we missed him by mere hours. We were scheduled to arrive at about 8am to Des Moines, flying through Chicago first on our international arrival. We didn't bother to call Charlotte and Paul, our friends and housesitters, because we'd already made arrangements to have them pick us up, and it was too early in the morning to call anyway.

We arrive at the airport, and we are so excited to be home, to see our friends, and to soon see our beloved pets. Only, something is not right. We see Charlotte and Paul, and we are excitedly waving at them and saying their names, and they almost look like they are not acknowledging us. Their pace lessens. Their faces ashen, they approach us with heads low, faces down. Sheila's exact words were "What's wrong, who died?" I think they couldn't believe that she guessed right first thing, because it looked like they were stunned, even more so than before. They tell us it's Wolfie, and Sheila insists on the knowing what happened right away.

They tell us that Wolfie was acting a little strange the night before. He was lethargic, and coughing, and maybe even vommitting a little. At first it didn't seem like a big deal, but then he was having trouble staying on his feet. So they very smartly took Wolfie to the emergency vet (there's only one in town). Wolfie couldn't even get into the car, he couldn't jump up. However, by the time they got to the vet, he was feeling more peppy, and was almost himself inside the building. The vets did an xray, and they found that his heart was greatly enlarged, with a lot of fluid around the area causing pressure on his heart and lungs. The vet on call at the time was fairly new and not experienced with the procedure for draining the fluid around the heart, so she called in a consult. But it didn't matter, it was too late. Wolfie died within an hour of his first symptoms, within a short time of being at the vet. He died peacefully.

Sheila and I went directly from the airport to see him. He was still on the table so to speak, as they had only worked on trying to revive him about 6 hours earlier. We were both devastated, he had already become such an integral part of our family. We visited with him for about an hour before we left for home. Subsequent investigation, include an autopsy revealed that he died of valvular stenosis, which is a hardening of the heart valves. It can be a genetic condition, so we were immediately worried about Winnie, our other puppy, and Buddy and Maggie - puppies from the same breeder and have the same father that belong to Uncle Billy and Granny. We let them know right away and found out there's a test you can perform, which is basically an echo cardiogram - the same thing you would do on humans.

We are pretty upset with our vet (Oaks Vet by Drake University) for not catching this. Apparently it's detectable as a heart murmur. And for Wolfie to have died at such a young age, it would have to be a rather large heart murmur. Usually you wouldn't notice any issues until the pet was 2 years old. You might see some signs, but they certain wouldn't die at such an early age. This is such a tragedy, because Wolfie was really the most beautiful and wonderful dog. He was such a bright spot in our life, something we needed while dealing with the trials and tribulations of med school life. He was extremely friendly, very playful, absolutely brilliant, and fairly obedient (he was a puppy after all).

We'll miss you!

Posted by Drink at Friday, July 31, 2009 0 comments
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Winnie goes to the Vet

Published on Thursday, May 14, 2009 in , ,


Pretty much everyone has met (virtually or in person) our newest family member Winnie. Say hello Winnie (woof woof)! She had her very first vet appointment this week, and I had the wonderful pleasure of taking her. I was actually really looking forward to it, because frankly I love showing off our pets. Everyone loves puppies, and these GSDs (German Shepherds) are just so damn cute!!! Wolfie has had some weird thing going on with his eye, some kind of infection, and it seemed to have flaired up again, so we wanted to take him again. I changed the appointment so they both could go, but I had to go in the middle of the day instead of the end, and Sheila had mandatory classes, so it was just going to be 3 of us.



I ran home from work with enough time to let the dogs out to go potty (yes, I am a dog owner, and we all say "potty" as if they were little children) and get them into the car and go. Fast forward to the vets office... I get out of my car door, run over to the passenger side to get Wolfie out. I should mention this is the 2 door car, which is leather seats, so the whole drive (which is only 5 minutes) they are sliding around the back seat of the car the whole time. This is also only the 2nd time Winnie has been in the car. Needless to say, they were anxious to get out. So I open the door and am trying to get the leash on Wolfie, but he won't stay still, despite my energetic commands. Winnie tries to jump out of the car, so I need to grab her, and Woflie escapes in the meantime. He's running around the parking lot, and not listening to my commands (sense a theme here?). Luckily, some nice people were just coming out of the office and offered to grab Wolfie, but his capture proved elusive. Luckily he wanted to go into the office (does he know what they do in there?), so instead I handed Winnie to these puppy loving bystanders. 

So I finally get a leash on Wolfie, and grab Winnie from the onlookers. I chatted with them for a couple minutes as a recompense for their nice gestures, and because they are also GSD lovers... then Winnie decides she's had enough of being held and leaps from my arms. I forget about Wolfie, and jump forward to catch Winnie, and get enough hands on her to ease her fall to the ground... otherwise I trust our vet visit would have been quite a bit longer and more involved! Naturally, Wolfie gets away. Ok, so I put the leash on Winnie this time so I can control her on the ground, and run to grab Wolfie. Winnie, come.... Winnie, come... Winnie... has no idea how to behave on a leash. Damn! I should have trained her. Well, there's nothing to be done about it now. I kinda just drag her along on the way to Wolfie, who is again at the door. 

So I open the door, and now Winnie is all too eager to move and check out her new environment. The only problem is, she goes left, and Wolfie goes right. Now I'm in a doggie straight jacket, because I'm holding them in the opposite hands. Ok, we do the introductions, blah blah, get them into the exam room, and wait a bit. Wolfie is experienced now, so he's pretty good, but Winnie wants to check everything out. Apparently I caught them at a dead time, because they send in two vets and two assistants. So there's examining going on and ooohing and aaahing, meanwhile I'm trying to control the pets, tell the assistants all about them, and listen to everything the vets are trying to say. Next, the exam is done, and we are trying to get out of there, and the pets are pulling me all over the place while I'm trying to pay. It's just crazy, I'm barely keeping control, and then they are handing me a bunch of medicine and stuff - no bag. Ugh! I'm glad there weren't other dogs in there at the time. I finally get them outside and back in the car, and start heading home, and they are great in the back, quietly laying down. Wait, why is Wolfie so calm? Barf! That's why, he had to vommit! Awesome! 

So that was our visit to the vet. They did great really, i was just frazzled being by myself. They are both puppies, so I don't really expect much from them, and they are just the sweatest, most friendly, best dogs in the world (and there's no convincing me otherwise, so don't even try)! By the way, they were both happy and healthy. Woflie weighs 54 lbs, Winnie is 20 lbs. Wolfie got some ointment for his eye, and they both got some heart worm treatment.

Posted by Drink at Thursday, May 14, 2009 0 comments
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