Meet Ulysses!

We got a new foster dog on Saturday! Ulysses is a five year old Australian cattledog mix. His blue eyes, fuzzy toes, and natural dock lead us to believe that he's mixed with Australian shepherd.

Uly came from the Orange County municipal shelter, where he was listed as available to rescues only for being kennel aggressive. He was evaluated by a rescue and found to be totally oblivious to other dogs in or out of his kennel. Last week I mentioned to a friend that I was considering fostering another dog, and she was looking for someone to foster Uly so she could pull him out of the shelter. He was scheduled for euthanasia in just a few hours.

We don't know a whole lot about Ulysses. He came into the shelter as an intact stray in mid-April, wearing a black collar and no identification. His teeth are very worn and a few are broken, he's going to be getting them taken care of soon. The shelter thought he was around five years old, I wouldn't be surprised if he was a little older. Uly seems to be housetrained and crate trained. He is somewhat food-motivated, but really loves attention more than anything else.

Ulysses is a wonderful dog!. He is mildly interested in my birds and turtles, pointedly avoids the cats, and is extremely polite to Brisbane and Ru. Ru has discovered that Uly is easily intimidated and likes to growl at him, Uly hides behind me. Brisbane is personally offended by intact and recently-neutered male dogs, but has finally decided that Uly is probably ok. We're taking things very slow and letting Uly relax and decompress before we start doing anything really fun and exciting.

This is a marvelously people-oriented dog, he doesn't really care what the other dogs are doing. Shelter dogs tend to change as they recover from the trauma over time, it often takes several weeks for their real personality to emerge. I am very much looking forward to seeing Uly blossom.