Mary Leprino was just a few years into sobriety when she met Pepper.
"He was a little janky Pomeranian, terrible teeth, not adoptable, stray. The owners didn't want him back, and the shelter that I got him from was having a hard time adopting him out, because he needed a lot of medical care," she remembered. "But I immediately found him, loved him and we nursed him back to health. And he was my companion."
The old dog struck a nerve in this moment in her life. He needed love; so did she. He wasn't perfect; neither was she.
"There's a saying in AA that, you know, things are perfectly imperfect. And I look at each and every animal and say, you are perfect because of their imperfections," Leprino said. "Pepper was my perfect sober companion that really got me through amazing hurdles and changed my life. And when he passed in 2017, I told him that I would pay it forward and make sure that people or dogs like him would be taken care of in the end of their lives. I didn't know how I was gonna do it, but I wanted to honor him, and so that's why we're here."
It's been six years since Leprino lost Pepper. Now, she and her family are poised to honor that promise.
This month, Pepper's Senior Dog Sanctuary opens in earnest on Leprino's family property in Littleton. It's a huge facility down the road from the Chatfield Reservoir, filled with veterinary suites, play areas and natural light. The nonprofit works with local shelters to identify older dogs that have little chance for adoption, then re-home those "undesirables" for the long haul. Leprino views Pepper's as both a sanctuary and a hospice center.
"It's a place where animals that are senior and have some medically complicated histories come to live out their last days," she said.
Leprino founded Pepper's with her son, Justin Klemer, and niece, Leigh Sullivan. They have big plans for their rescue operation.
From the outside, Pepper's looks like it could be a church. It is supposed to provide spiritual healing, after all.
Leprino plans to host groups from senior centers and recovery programs, to give both the dogs and two-legged visitors chances to cuddle up in the facility's big kitchen or play in the yard.
"It's a community project," Leprino told us. "It isn't just about the dogs. We're taking care of some great humans, too."
But beyond their work with people, Leprino said she's angling to grow her nonprofit's footprint across the state.
She and her family traveled to similar shelters across the country to research best practices as they got Pepper's started. Once they iron out the kinks in these early days, they're hopeful they may be able to expand beyond their current capacity - 50 dogs - and build more sanctuaries.
"I don't want it to just stop with dogs too," Klemer added. "Dogs are our passion, what we know the most and it was the best place to start - and it's where our primary focus will be for the foreseeable future. But cats are also a hugely underserved part of the community that we would like to serve."
It turns out finding homes for older dogs can be tough.
While Pepper's has just opened, the family has been working towards this for a while. They've picked up about a dozen dogs in the last few years. Most of them live in Klemer and Leprino's homes to make room for more in the sanctuary. Keysa, a little black-and-brown pup with a bad eye, was their first official adoption.
"Ever since we took Keysa a couple weeks ago, we've been inundated with requests," Klemer told us. "The waitlist is endless."
Leprino said local shelter managers have been delighted to connect with her because older dogs can't always find families. People looking to adopt might balk at their medical costs, or they may not be emotionally ready to fall in love with someone at the end of their life. Sometimes, she said, shelters euthanize animals that are unadoptable to free up space.
Tammy Vigil, the spokesperson for Denver's Department of Public Health and Environment, said older dogs do hang around the Denver Animal Shelter longer than their younger peers. She said the city only euthanizes animals if they're suffering or a danger to humans, but they will transfer older animals to other facilities.
"Senior dogs with medical needs beyond the capacity of our shelter are sometimes transferred to senior-specific rescue groups, and having those organizations available to assist is extremely helpful," she told us.
Pepper's does not accept dogs from owners, just shelters that need to free up some cage space. They also do not allow people to adopt dogs from them, though Leprino said she'd be open to it if she observed a particularly perfect match between human and canine.
"We like to never say never," Klemer said.
In the meantime, they hope people might consider adopting senior dogs from other shelters.
"I would love for people to consider adopting older dogs because, by and large, a lot of them are already house trained, they have good manners, they're not going to eat your furniture," she said. "And they are personalities. They have as much personality as a crazy old man. And who doesn't love a crazy old man?"
It still may be too much for some. Leprino and her family know intimately what it means to lose an animal they've bonded with.
"We say the love is bigger than the loss," Leprino said.
What makes their short time together sweeter, she added, is seeing them blossom in their old age while they can.
"We call it Pepper's Magic. They thrive," she told us, beaming. "We have this one dog, Sophie. It was told to us that she was a hospice dog, that they were going to have to euthanize her, and she maybe had a few months. It's been a year and a few months, hasn't it? And she's thriving. Thriving."
