Eugene weekly., January 06, 2011, Page 10, Image 10

PITTIE PEOPLE
TODD COOPER
TODD COOPER
What kind of person would own a pit bull? BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
SONDRA ARRACHE
ELIZABETH THOMPSON
massage therapist and dog rescuer
owner, Sweet Potato Pie and Target employee
PIP AND GABRIEL (PICTURED)
ZEETA AND MAX
Sondra Arrache rescued Gabriel from Lane County Animal
Services (LCAS) back before the agency began its effort to go
No Kill. Gabriel, she says, was slated to be euthanized the day she
went and got him. “Nobody wanted him because he was a total
spaz,” she says. Now Gabriel’s a trained bird hunter, though “no
longer practicing,” and sleeps under the covers at night. She says,
“Once I got him I realized I’d never have another type of dog.” In
his youth, she says, he would leave the covers when he got hot,
then wake her up to crawl back in when he got cold again. Now,
at age 10, he likes to snuggle the night through.
Gabriel and Arrache’s year-old foster pup, Pip, are both
brindle, which she says “is the most overlooked color of dog at
a shelter.” Pip was rescued from a high kill shelter and came to
Arrache bald due to mange, and emaciated. She nursed him back
to health and he’s looking for his forever home. Arrache works
with Save the Pets and rescues and fosters pit bulls. Pit bulls, she
says, “Are loyal, loving, serious with an almost human quality to
them, but very much a real, muscular, athletic beast.” She adds,
“They have a childlike quality.”
When not working one of her two jobs — she owns Sweet
Potato Pie in downtown Eugene and is a “low level manager” at
Target — and raising her two kids, Elizabeth Thompson plays for
the Andromedolls in the roller derby, coaches the Junior Gems and
fosters dogs for Luv-a-Bull Pit Bull Rescue, LCAS, Save the Pets
and “whomever else needs me.” She’s fostered at least 200 dogs
over the years, most of them “mama pit bulls and their puppies.”
Thompson says, “We’re the house that is constantly full of
kids, and the pit bulls love it when we have the Junior Roller
Girls’ sleepovers. Last summer, it was about 40 girls — the dogs
were in heaven! Me? Not so much!”
She got Max from a backyard breeder, “before I knew better.”
“Max was my entry into the world of discrimination,” she says. “As
a middle-class white girl, I’d never experienced discrimination until I
got Max. Suddenly friends didn’t want their kids coming to the house.”
Thompson says, “They are judged so harshly, and most of
what people think about pits is false. I got involved in rescue to
dispel myths, help educate people about them and do everything I
could to encourage spaying and neutering of my favorite breed.”
Before getting her dogs, she says, “Like most people, I had
never been around pit bulls and was terrifi ed of them. Everything
I’d ever seen or heard about them was negative, and I was fearful
of what I didn’t know.” But she met a friend’s pit, who was “good
and gentle with my kids, beyond anything I’d ever seen with any
dog, and I’ve had dogs all my life.”
Zeeta came from Luv-a-Bull and had become a certifi ed
therapy dog through Delta Society — the most prestigious honor
a therapy dog can have — while at Luv-a-Bull, Thompson says.
“Zeeta is the epitome of what a pit bull can and should be. She
loves all people, and is a true pit bull ambassador.”
10 JANUARY 6, 2011
EUGENE WEEKLY
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