My name is: Pepper
I came from: Romania
Now I live in: London
My favourite things are: Lazy morning lie-ins, finding discarded food in the park, sunbathing, making piles of sticks in the garden
Follow me on Instagram: My humans are not that cool

Pepper’s story

We were desperate to get a dog for years, but were not absolutely, 100% sure that we were ready for the enormous commitment. Lockdown was on its last legs, we felt like we might want to travel and were worried our lifestyle might not be fair on a pooch. Then, Eve suggested we could foster. We were in! That way we’ll help multiple dogs, we thought, and when we’re ready to settle, we’ll adopt!

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and we get a delivery, just in time for Christmas. We’d been warned she’d (understandably) be shaken and stressed on arrival, but I was still a bit shocked. Pepper was the most terrified dog I had ever seen in my life. We sat with her, at a distance, and gave her some time. Snacks helped. For the first few days we got know each other very slowly, on her terms. We couldn’t even look directly at her, otherwise she’d run and hide. Deep down, I wondered how we’d manage. Slowly but surely she came out of her shell, tentatively. So, after a few days, we thought she was ready for a bath (she smelt pretty horrendous). She was so unhappy in the bath, that we basically thought, whilst feeding her spoonfuls of food, we’d have to gain back all the trust we had gotten. And then, something happened. She ran around the house, manically, bouncing off the coffee table onto the couch in loops of excitement and for the first time, our Pepper showed her true colours. She seemed happy.

From then onwards, we went from strength to strength, at a speed we weren’t expecting. Her first time out the front door, her first walk, her first time inside a shop, her first car journey, her first time off the lead, her first time playing with another dog. Our walks basically consisted in walking up to people with little dogs and introducing Pepper, giving them food that they would then give her. She didn’t take long to start expecting food from everyone in the park! All in the matter of days and weeks, she blew us away.

What’s amazing about adopting a rescue pooch is that every little win feels incredible. She’s chewing a stick for the first time?! Mind blowing. Letting someone else pet her?! Incredible. SHE JUST CHASED A BALL?! Unbelievable. Watching her bounce along happily on our morning walks will never get old.

Needless to say, we weren’t going to give her up. Within a few weeks we couldn’t imagine our lives before we had her, and we adopted her.

Once we had fallen in love with Pepper and decided to adopt her, we realised that the extra logistics of having her are not that hard at all to manage. We generally take her everywhere with us, and when we go somewhere we can't take her, either friends look after her or we find someone on Gudog who can dog-sit her, and she loves it!

We get asked on the daily what breed she is, because she’s so beautiful (objectively), and if she’s a puppy, because she’s as happy and playful as one (she’s now two). She’s incredibly smart, the fastest learner and the most adaptable. She’s as happy to chill with us on the sofa as she is on a 10k hike, in the middle of central London, trotting along happily, unfazed by the hustle and bustle, or snoozing under our table in a restaurant. She’s actually grown to love being the centre of attention in any pub, bar or restaurant we take her to, working her big puppy eyes to get some treatos.

Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts for bringing her into our lives. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us.

- Olivia