The first big adventure I can really remember was when I was 13 weeks old. That was in March 1999. It started out as a normal Saturday morning, I had my breakfast in the garage where my dog pack slept at night and then went outside to do my "dooty" and begin my day.

Usually my brothers and sister and I would run around playing and chasing each other until we got tired. Sometimes the little girl that lived in the house would come out and play with us. They called me James then and I used to have the most fun with my brother Angus.

It was about mid day and was getting hot, so Angus and I went to our shady spot way in the back by the fence where we had dug a hole to keep cool and sleep in. All of a sudden two strangers came into our back yard along with the man and woman that lived in the house. We all went over to investigate these strangers and give them a good sniffing. They didn't have any dog smells on them at all, but they did smell of some kind of animal that I later found out was a cat (more on that later). These strangers seemed to want to play with all of us and were asking the man and woman a lot of questions about us. The woman stranger wanted to pick us all up and hold us belly up, which we weren't used to. When it was my turn I just figured I would let her hold me since it seemed futile to fight it. The man stranger just wanted to play around with us, which he did for a long time and that was fun. He played mostly with Angus and the woman stranger played mostly with me.

After a while the people all went into the house and left us alone to get back to our naps. Angus and I just shrugged and went back to our hole by the fence.

We were just getting back to sleep when all the people came back out again and wanted to play some more (didn't they know it was naptime?). They played a little with my mom and dad and then mostly with me and Angus. The woman stranger picked me up and held me again (weird), while the man stranger played with Angus. I was the largest of all the young ones and Angus was the smallest. Back in the house they all went again leaving us to wonder what the heck was going on.

Soon after that the man who lived in the house came back out and picked me up and carried me into the house. We didn't get to go into the house very often because we were usually pretty dirty from playing around in the dirt all the time. The rest of the people were sitting around the table doing something while the man just carried me around and talked to me. The little girl came over and was petting me and started crying. Then all the people who lived in the house were petting me and saying things like "bye James", "be a good doggie", and "we'll miss you" and stuff like that. The woman stranger picked me up again (sheesh) and we all went out to the front, where I've never been before, and got into a strange car. I had only been in a car one time when we all went to the vet for checkups and shots. I was a little scared and couldn't figure out what was happening to me. The man stranger started the car and we drove off! I didn't even get to say goodbye to Angus!

It was exciting to look out the windows and see all the stuff going by. It seemed like a very long car ride, in fact I finally got so tired since I hadn't had my nap yet, that I went to sleep on the woman strangers lap. I had some funny dreams, but then I have funny dreams all the time. After what seemed like a very long nap I woke up and we were still driving, but were pulling into a parking lot of a big store called PETCO.