(Lander, WY) – After a weeks-long battle with medical issues, the Milek family of Lander recently faced the tragic loss of their beloved service dog, Thor.
Thor was four years old going on five and had been trained to tend to 12-year-old Wade Milek’s epilepsy diagnosis. But Thor was more than just a service animal; he was Wade’s best friend and a family companion until his final days.
Wade’s mom, Whitney, recently spoke with County 10 and shared their story.
“Wade was born with a chromosome defect, or duplication is the better word for it,” Whitney explained. “(This) caused generalized epilepsy. He’s had seizures since he was just a few days old, (which) went undiagnosed until he was right around one.”
Wade has since dealt with seizures that varied in severity and frequency, Whitney continued, which can be triggered by things like stress, hormones and sickness, among other factors.
Years ago, when the family was living in Colorado, Wade would suffer from what Whitney called “cluster seizures,” where he would “just have one seizure after another right on top of each other, where he wasn’t really coming out of them in between.”
After multiple 60-mile drives over a mountain pass to the nearest hospital to get help, doctors eventually suggested getting Wade a service dog, “because most of his seizures are in his sleep,” Whitney explained.
“We have an older son that’s two and a half years older (Macoy), and they were sharing a room. It got to the point where his brother wouldn’t even come and get us and tell us. He would just pick Wade up, put him back in bed, and lay next to him so he couldn’t fall off the bed again.”
“Right before 2020, Wade had another cluster of seizures and ended up aspirating really bad and was taken out in the ambulance and spent five days in Denver at the hospital,” Whitney continued. “And it was something that could have been prevented had somebody or something been with him.”
The family then knew it was time to start looking into getting a service dog, a process that is as expensive as it is difficult.
“There’s only a handful of facilities in the United States that are trained in seizure response dogs,” Whitney explained. “They’re one of the harder ones to train.”
The first facility they looked into was in California, where they discovered the cost was approximately $60,000, in addition to the hurdle of being placed on a four-year waiting list.
During her research, Whitney soon discovered Medical Mutts, a facility in Indianapolis that provided them with two options: the family could bring in a dog to be trained if it passed certain criteria, or the facility could do a search itself for a dog that fits that same criteria and is of the right disposition, then conduct the training.
Whitney then began searching for a dog “all over social media,” which ideally would be the right kind of bloodline and come from a line of seizure response dogs.
The family found a couple of options: one in Cody with a “pretty decent wait list” that was also “pretty expensive,” and a solo breeder in Florida who had just had a litter.
“I told them our situation and what we were looking at, and they offered to gift us a puppy out of that litter,” Whitney shared. “All we had to do is pay for the transportation to get him from Florida to Colorado.”
After years of searching and accepting the generous offer from the Florida breeder, the family soon met Thor, a 9-week-old chocolate lab.
“When Thor was eight weeks old, a transport company picked him up in Florida and drove him out to us in Colorado,” Whitney went on to share.
When Thor arrived a week later, he walked “directly to” Wade, Whitney continued. “I realize how cheesy it might sound, but they truly had an instant bond. Just instant, instant love.”
They gave him the name Thor because his paws were giant, Whitey explained.
“Wade said he was going to be his superhero, and that he had hammer paws.”
After that initial bonding, Thor underwent service training on how to tend to epileptic seizures, starting with Zoom calls to Medical Mutts for the basics, and then a trip to Indianapolis for hands-on training just after Thor turned one year old.
After nine months of training, Thor returned and the family eventually moved to Lander.
Thors newly acquired skills immediately came in handy, as Wade was seizing about once a week on average.
While Wade’s seizures will most likely never go away, they became more manageable with Thor around, Whitney shared. However, back in October, Wade’s seizures took a turn for the worse.
“We still don’t know if it was just a hormone change or what it was, but Wade had two weeks where he was having so many seizures that his brain was not coming out of that seizure status in between them,” Whitney explained. “He was just kind of like a zombie, you know, he wasn’t there. He would slur speech.”
Then, to make matters worse, Thor began showing signs of some kind of health issues back in January.
“Thor just kind of quit eating, which is not normal for a chocolate lab,” Whitney shared. “But he was still acting fine. You know, he’s still happy. Still this normal guy, still doing his job. He just wouldn’t eat.”
After changing his diet and trying to figure out what was wrong with him, Thor’s condition got worse, and he began losing weight and maintaining a fever.
They then brought Thor to the Lander Valley Animal Hospital, where he received medication, but the next day Thor began vomiting blood, and he was immediately ordered to go to the Colorado State University animal hospital for more in-depth testing.
(Whitney also noted how much Lander Valley Animal Hospital helped throughout the whole process, only charging them for services when it was “absolutely necessary.”)
“Initially, they were pretty sure it was cancer,” Whitney commented. “And if it was, there’s not a whole lot they could have done for it. His bone marrow was just not producing enough mature blood cells to support his body.”
While being tested, doctors did a bone marrow aspiration and two blood transfusions, and at one point, Thor had “15 pathologists, internists, and oncologists working on his case,” because, as Whitney said, “they knew the story and knew how bad we needed him.”
The oncologists ultimately determined Thor’s condition wasn’t cancer, Whitmey continued.
“The only thing that they could really come up with is that he was exposed to some sort of toxin that isn’t necessarily toxic to all dogs, but it was toxic to him. And it made his body go into this, like, insane immune response. Like an autoimmune disease. It just started attacking everything.”
While Thor was being treated, the family faced another tragedy when Whitney learned her mother-in-law, whom she was the prime caregiver for and was battling pancreatic cancer, was most likely in her final days.
The veterinarians got Thor stable enough to release him, and they made it home 45 minutes before her mother-in-law passed away.
Since that time, Thor underwent various tests and had multiple blood transfusions, but late last week, they hit another hurdle when they ran out of donors for the blood transfusions.
After putting out a call for help, around 100 people with labradors responded to help donate blood.
However, tragically, even the last-minute blood donations weren’t enough to save Thor, and he passed away earlier this week.
“He fought and fought,” Whitney said of Thor’s final days. “Every time we thought he was getting worse, he just kept on fighting.”
The stress of his dog being sick and now having passed away has caused increased seizure activity for Wade, Whitney went on to inform, and the family is now facing the harsh reality of having to go through the process of finding/paying for another service dog for Wade, all while they are already about $20,000 deep in vet bills and travel expenses.
To help with those costs, the family started a GoFundMe, which was set up just before Thor’s passing.
While the loss of Thor is an immense tragedy to the Milek family, Whitney shared a glimmer of hope that continues to shine, which originated when the family was on their way back from traveling to get Thor years ago.
“So when we were flying back with Thor to Thermopolis,” where Whitney is from and where most of the funds came from to help them get Thor in the first place, “Wade looked at me and said, “I want to do this for other kids.”
“So Wade started a nonprofit. The Western Wyoming Epilepsy Fund,” Whitney shared. “If we raise enough money and there’s anything in excess of what our bills are, it will all go into that nonprofit to help other kids.”
Whitey said she hopes Wade and Thor’s story will help raise awareness for any other families who may be going through the same thing.
You can learn more about Wade’s non-profit here.
