Beware the Puppy Byte: How My Golden Retriever Took Down Wolfware’s Server

Confession Time
I’m the proud owner of Mora, a mischievous golden retriever puppy—and equally proud proprietor of a now-infamous incident at Wolfware: our on-prem dev server went dark for two whole weeks. Unlike the usual “dog ate my homework,” this time it was “puppy ate my fiber,” and it took down our entire Kubernetes dev cluster, the docs sites for all our products, and even the company website.

How I Discovered the Chaos
One afternoon, as I was wrapping up a code review, I noticed something strange by the server rack: the fiber optic cable was undulating, as if a fish had been hooked and was still thrashing. Intrigued, I approached—and there was Mora, happily wagging her tail beside a split cable, shiny blue strands spilling out like noodles. One bite, and our dev environment vanished.

Two Weeks of Offline Dev
Without that lone fiber link, our Kubernetes cluster refused to serve up any pods. Developers couldn’t spin up preview environments, our documentation sites threw 404s, and the Wolfware homepage? Gone until we sorted a repair. While we waited on a replacement run of cable (and a very special “puppy-safe” jacket for it), the team resorted to local Docker setups and handwritten notes in Slack threads.

Puppy-Proofing 2.0
Rising from the ashes of this canine catastrophe, I’ve instituted Wolfware’s new Puppy-Proof Protocols™:

1. Server-Room Gate: A solid barrier keeps all paws out of the rack area.
2. Cable Armor: Every line now lives inside steel-braided conduit with lock-tight end caps.
3. Overhead Trussing: Wherever possible, cables run above rack height, safely out of reach.
4. Redundant Fiber: A secondary fiber path ensures that if Mora ever strikes again, we’ll fail over in seconds instead of weeks.

Lessons Learned

• Even dev environments deserve production-grade redundancy.
• Never underestimate a puppy’s determination… or teething strength.
• A little humor goes a long way when explaining a two-week outage to your CFO.

Now, when Mora gives me that innocent “I-just-wanted-to-play” look, I simply smile—secure my backup link—and carry on knowing our infrastructure is smarter (and tougher) than any teething pup.