Okay, Doc, somehow I didn't envision you playing Skyrim. Dunno why, it's not like I don't know any other retiree gamers.
And while shields dropping from wolves does seem a bit odd (just pretend it was tangled up in the thing), I've seen worse. Hell, games allow you to wear full suits of armor you took from other people, when the reality is that most armor, ESPECIALLY plate armor, had to be custom-fitted or else it would hinder you more than it would protect you. I won't even get into peeling armor off giants only to have it fit your gnome warrior perfectly. Giving up on a perfectly good game because a wolf had a shield as loot seems a bit...silly, but then, I've been playing MMOs off and on since EverQuest, which had far more blatant reality breaks than that.
As one of my best friends is a supervisor at ZeniMax, I'll check to see if wolves still drop shields, and if so, pass on Dan's complaint. I doubt it'll change much, but it's still something.
As to Skyrim, I ended up having to uninstall it. Half my mods switched to using SKSE-64, but the SKSE developer abandoned it while it was still at an alpha stage, making anything relying on it into a comedy of bugs. Shame, too, it was an entertaining game.