Its hard for me to know where to base from. I was drawn to Bambi and other "furry" (if "feral") stories and characters from an age so early I don't actually remember. I've seen photos of me when I was 3 years old holding a (Disneyfied) Bambi storybook. If I go by that ... 46 years (I'm 49 IRL now).

Because that was such an early age, its difficult for me to even pin down any one movie or book that "made me furry." For some reason I can't solidly substantiate, however, I feel the biggest influence was a book my mother read to my sister and I titled Yellow Eyes, by Rutherford George Montgomery, the protagonist being a member of your favorite taxonomic Family. ;)

Well, what about when you created your fursona? That's where I am pointing it for myself.

This one I created in 2003, but this was not my first. I had another one before that, another one before that, and another one before that. That first one, a bald eagle, I created in around springtime in 1997, so ... 28 years?

The anally retentive accuracy-obsessed beast within me wants to amend that: I actually did *not* create this 'sona. I used to roleplay (non-yiff roleplay), had a group of quality-focused players on a server getting overrun by, ahem, low-quality players, so we decided to start our own server. One of my fellow roleplay server rebels, Auryanne, whom also happened to be an artist (but I found out recently she died, we hadn't had much contact in recent years but I was searching for her to reconnect when I made the unfortunate discovery :/) decided on a North American theme, and our wiz "sonas" would be Native American gods. She picked Manabozho, a rabbit god, as her sona, and Chibiabos -- Manabozho's wolf brother -- as mine. Since these were primarily wizard accounts, I decided to just adopt Chibiabos for all my "greater furrydom" 'sona stuff.

Woah, what an amazing back-story you've shared!! That's a killer stroke of pure luck that you stumbled upon Wolf's Rain when you did. Such an EXCELLENT core anime to become induced to the fandom over! :D It's great that you were so thoroughly inspired! And 18 years is quite a long stretch, for sure. LONG!!! I'm dutifully impressed that you were able to stick with it and still maintain a strong sense of passion for both your characters and the art you commission on the regular. Way too fun! <3

Gosh, it's been a little over 20 years for me now.
I remember back in 2001 when the Gamecube was on the verge of release, seeing a VERY cool little teaser photo of Fox McCloud in a then-upcoming new title called Starfox Adventures. Then I saw a picture of him paired up with a new character named Krystal and I was like DUDE, THAT'S NEAT!!!
So I searched Google for "Starfox Adventures Wallpaper" or something to that extent. Among the listed search results, there was a very small link to a website called X-cuco.com (or X-Red, I think? One of the two, for sure.) This newfound website navigated me even further down into a VERY gnarly gallery of digital furry artwork with a heavy industrial metal track playing in the BG for added ambience. I browsed through this page and realized I had stumbled onto a tickle torture-heavy fetish-driven page... but I had nO IDEA what to expect! I didn't imagine seeing Fox strapped up in a chair with feathers brushing against his toe-paws. This was a strange yet liberating bit of exposure for me. Afterwards came VLC, the liberation of Poofywolf and sharing written projects to SoFurry, then Guppy's Paint BBS and soon enough, I stumbled upon this website around 2006, just a few months shy after graduating high school. Since then, I've ditched my old teen-angsty goth-emo-laden userhandle for the one I now currently use and have used for a while now: Gratitude-Advocate. :3

Thanks for sharing this lovely, insightful and memorable journal! The nostalgia is just too good to pass up. 8)

I entered the fandom late 90s my nick was given to by my tribal elders.

My introductory was definitely wolf’s rain, wolf quest, Okami, and twilight princess. I don’t know if rping as a wolf on wolf quest (unironically called “Blue”) counts but, I want to say that I was 12 or 13 at the start and probably 17 when I was more of a lurker and occasional artist on here. Later embraced my artsy side and created my two main characters and adopted one in my later 20’s.