Book Review: Pepper Becoming (Unwanted dog becomes dearly loved)

Pepper Becoming: The Journey of an Unwanted Dog and the Man Who Wanted Her, by John Visconti and Pepper M. Visconti* (RSDS, 2018, 191 pages, $12.95)

Delightfully Funny and Touching

Occasionally someone will get a dog, fall in love, and advance into dog sports like agility or rally or obedience or tricks or nosework as a hobby, or, after the honeymoon is over, will realize the troubled dog has issues like leash reactivity or thunder phobia or separation anxiety, or perhaps is aggressive (or, like Pepper, all of them). Then the person hires a dog trainer and spends considerable time and money trying to make the dog feel more comfortable in her skin. More occasionally, the person learns so much and loves so deeply that he becomes a dog trainer himself.

Such was the case with our author, John Visconti, winner of the prestigious Maxwell Award for Best General Reference Book: 2015 for Fetch More Dollars for Your Dog Training Business.

The Story

Pepper was labelled a reactive dog at both her shelters, having been abandoned, adopted out and returned. She was a sickly shelter dog for two years until she met the love of her life, John Visconti.

Living on Long Island, after the death of his cat, Visconti volunteered to walk dogs at a shelter and ended up with a difficult dog that he fell in love with: the feeling was mutual for nine years. Five-year-old Pepper was the dog Visconti walked almost daily until they adopted each other. 

Visconti reads 15 dog training books and fortunately happens upon a positive-reinforcement trainer who takes him under her wing. He even shares a lot of training jargon and methodology for the reader, but, don't worry, it's not difficult to understand.

Dogs thrive on routine and Pepper was no exception. Moving from New York to North Carolina was a challenge but Visconti made sacrifices to keep the human-animal bond strong.

Overflowing with love for his dog, Visconti is the perfect dog owner who believes in and trusts his dog so much that eventually Pepper learns to generally overcome her aggression, resource guarding, and separation anxiety issues. Visconti even develops a 'recipe' for thunder phobia that is published in a professional dog training journal.

The Style

With very short chapters (that this reviewer loves) and a touching cover photo (also on the book's webpage here), Pepper Becoming is a book you will start and savor slowly for the unique humor, eventually reading faster and faster until the end of both the book and the fortunate life of the fabulous Pepper. Goodbyes are always so hard and Visconti takes us along with him and his dog.

The Videos

A book-end bonus is a list of URLs if you want to see Pepper in action. In addition, there are many more home videos of Pepper playing in her backyard, Pepper going through agility tunnels, Pepper learning new skills - and having fun!

Life After Pepper

Saying goodbye and letting go: Grief is the price we pay for love. And so Pepper's journey continues. . . . 

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*Did you notice the co-author is Pepper the dog? What a lovely tribute.