Under the Oak Tree: Saying Goodbye to Our Rescue Dogs

Personal

This blog post will be a little different than usual. It is highly personal, and normally I prefer to keep my personal and business lives very separate. However, this has affected me greatly, and I feel I need to say something, because they mattered.

If it’s not something you want to read about, please feel free to skip this one. I won’t be offended. But if you’re curious about the people behind Tonitunes®, here we go.

We are rescuers

I don’t only rescue vintage pieces and rehome them. My husband and I have been doing that with critters our entire married lives, and that’s been 33 years.
In just the last few months, we have had to say goodbye to four of our babies, and it has taken a toll on us both.

I’m not quitting, that’s not what I’m saying. But business may move a little slower for a short time while my heart begins to mend. Right now it feels shattered into a million pieces.

You see, we tend to rescue older animals. The ones with health or behavioral problems. The ones that, for one reason or another, can’t easily be rehomed. That means our time with them is often much shorter than we would like. But it’s something we feel called to do, because the love they give in the time they have left is incredible.

Flex

This season of loss started with Flex back in October. Flex wasn’t technically my dog, he belonged to my sister, Stacy. But Stacy lives with us, so he was part of our household and quickly became ours in heart.

Flex was old. We’re not sure how old. His little body was eaten up with arthritis, he was blind, mostly deaf, but he loved nothing more than cuddling up against someone and just relaxing. He was such a little lover.

His passing came suddenly. Yes, we knew he was old, but one morning he just didn’t want his breakfast. Instead, he wanted our laps. In the span of an hour, he went from that to gone. No warning. That was rough on all of us.

Lady

Then, at the very end of November, our lovely little spaniel Ladybug started declining rapidly.

Lady had come to us in a different way. A family member contacted me because someone they knew was going through a divorce. Her soon-to-be ex had no intention of taking care of “her dogs” and was threatening her. I took Lady in with the intention of rehoming her and even found a foster family.

But the weekend after she went to her foster home, I received the message no rescuer ever wants to hear: she had run away.

I was devastated. The foster family was devastated. For a week we searched with no luck and had begun to accept that she was gone. But a week later, she showed back up on their doorstep.

They called me with the good news, but also told me they no longer wanted to foster her because they were afraid it might happen again. So I brought her home.

Funny thing is, she never once tried to run away from here. I eventually decided she must have chosen her people, and she would stay here from then on.

Lady passed away in bed beside me one night. We had had her for about twelve years at that point, and she had been around six when we rescued her. That loss felt like my heart shattered.

Donny

Then came Donny and this one knocked the wind right out of me.

He had only been with us since 2020. When he was rescued, we had been told he was a young dog. I was actually in Washington with my father after the death of his wife when I got the call that a little terrier needed rescue.

My son Tanner took him in until I could get home. By the time I returned, later than originally planned, that little terror terrier and his goofy antics had already cemented himself into everyone’s hearts.

He was pure energy in motion. Never still for a moment. If anyone had food, he was begging for some. He didn’t care what kind of food it was. If you were eating it, he wanted it.

He had this adorable trick where he would stand up on his back feet and dance for his treats. But you had to be careful. He had what we called a “steel trap mouth.” If you weren’t careful, he’d grab the treat and your fingers along with it. Every time we gave him a treat we had to remind him, “no gobble.”

Then he started acting strangely. Not energetic like usual. We took him to the vet and learned two devastating things: his kidneys were shutting down, and he was far older than we had been led to believe.

They managed to stabilize him, and he gave us another two weeks. Then it all came back, worse than before. His kidneys were failing and now his heart was failing too. We were told this would only keep happening and that we needed to consider his quality of life.

So we made the hardest decision a pet owner ever has to make. Donny would never have been happy if he couldn’t run and play.

Zeus

That left Zeus, our very old, very arthritic pitty.

Zeus is a rescue I will never forget.

He had started life as a loved house dog, but somehow ended up tied in the backyard of a relative of his original owners after they moved away. That family member had dogs that were allowed to roam freely, and they would attack Zeus.

When we got him, the damage to his tail was so severe our vet thought it might have to be amputated. What made it worse was that he was so happy to be back in a loving home that he wagged his tail constantly, hitting it on walls and furniture and reopening the wounds again and again.

Thankfully it eventually healed, and life moved forward.

Zeus never learned to trust other big dogs after what he had been through. He liked little dogs, but anything his size made him nervous. So we modified the house to keep everyone safe, putting up animal gates across certain rooms.

He also wasn’t very trusting of other humans. But this family? We were his people. And he loved us with every ounce of his being.

After everything he had been through, we were determined he would have the best life possible. That included expensive dog toys… which he ignored in favor of a simple 20-ounce soda bottle every single time. If there was one in the trash can, Zeus would find it. Once Patsy had a bottle sitting in her lap. Zeus walked up, took it, punctured it, drank the soda, and then happily shredded the bottle. It was one of his favorite things in the world.

On Monday he had a heart attack. He wasn’t suffering at first, so we chose to keep him at home where he felt safe. We sat with him, slept beside him, and made sure he knew his people were there. We did that until Friday.

Late Thursday night things changed. He began having trouble breathing and it frightened him. He started whining and became restless. By Friday morning he was barely conscious. So we took him to our vet.

Bless them, they came out to the car so Zeus didn’t have to go inside and be frightened in a vet’s office. Surrounded by his people, we helped him pass peacefully. Our veterinarian, Parker Animal Clinic, has cared for every animal we’ve had for years, and their kindness and compassion in moments like this remind me why we trust them so completely.

So please have patience with me.

All of those babies, and the many before them, are buried here on our farm under an oak tree we planted 32 years ago.

If we had the same choices to make again, we would make them again, even though our hearts feel shattered into a million pieces right now, because even when the goodbye hurts this much, the love they give us along the way makes every moment worth it.

I will get back into the swing of things with Tonitunes® soon. But for now, I need to take a little time for my own mental health. All orders will still go out as normal, but new additions will have to wait a little while.

I hope you all understand.

Why Loving and Losing Rescue Dogs Is Bittersweet and Beautiful