Copied from the UKFur forum:
Oh jeez... this might take a while. *lights a pipe*
Firstly please forgive me if I ramble here, I can't recall everything specifically.
From what I can remember of my childhood there was a lot of cartoons on which had anthro characters in them: Around the world with Willy Fog, Teenage Mutant Hero/Ninja Turtles, Dangermouse, The Dreamstone, Bucky o'Hare, The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, etc.
Back then I really only had two good friends (I was very much a loner) and we used to roleplay as characters from the cartoons we watched every single day. As we got older my friends grew out of roleplaying, but I didn't. I still loved the idea of being a crime-fighting wolf/fox/feline/whatever protecting the innocent and kicking arse. I took to drawing characters from Sonic the Comic and then started developing my own, but as I grew into adolescence and I started to lose the fine dexterity in my fingers I stopped.
Fast forward through High School to year 10. I'd met a person that some of you might know, Blue Phoenix, through some RPG friends of mine. We started talking and got on quite well with each other and soon after that she introduced me to meditation. It was through this, on my first venture into my pocket realm, I discovered that I am a werewolf. It was even more interesting when I couldn't stop walking on my toes for a full hour after I'd finished.
I needed to know more, so I went to the local video store and rented as many werewolf films as I could, as well as borrowing my friend's "Werewolf: The Apocolypse" books to read. I already had an interest in costumes at this point and decided to look on the internet for "werewolf costumes".
Most of the sites and pictures I found were really tacky fancy dress costumes, but one website stuck out: the website for Haunted Verdun Manor. It was a walk-around haunted house with actors, some of which actually wore amazingly detailed werewolf costumes. I was enthralled and made a vow to myself that I would one day have a costume of that quality.
After a little more searching I found the personal website of one of the guys who worked there. I'm not going to name him as... well you'll see why further on.
I spent about a week following link after link from his site and amassed a great deal of info in my head about "furry". I had found kindred spirits, which made me amazingly happy.
I decided to send an email to the guy, introducing myself. Unfortunately his reply was... less than civil. It made me think that the Furry Fandom was an elitest club. I spent two weeks after that rethinking everything and in the end I stuffed my true self into a little ball inside of me. That was possibly the most depressing point of my life.
About a month of so later I was back on the internet again and I stumbled onto TimmyPup's website and decided to email him. The response I got from him was a helluva lot better than the one from the above guy, and Tim convinced me to go to an LF meet. The was really the start of my presence in the fandom.
That's all about how I discovered furry, but I'm on a roll here so I'm gonna keep going!
Fast forward to FC2005. I'd already been to three fur cons (AC02, FC03, AC03) and was enjoying my second FC. I was also friends with Ysengrin on LJ. Ysengrin used to work and live at Haunted Verdun Manor, along with his partner DarkFang, when it was still operating under Lance Pope.
Now at the time I was trying to find anyone who knew where I could get an Action Packer (large plastic container, very rugged) from so that I could take my fursuit back to England on the plane with me. I wandered into one of the fursuit panels to see Ysengrin sat at the table talking about fursuit performance, to which he regaled some tales of Verdun Manor. Afterwards I approached him and after introducing myself and taking a look at his fursuit head I asked him if he knew where I could find an Action Packer. Not only did he tell me where, but he and DarkFang drove me to the place to get one!
After FC I kept in contact with the two of them and feelings started coming back from my teenage years, the werewolf inside me was breaking out of the shell I had kept him in. Soon after I accepted what I am and after spending FC2006 with them I decided to commission them to make me a werewolf fursuit, and on Halloween last year I took ownership of it. I'm now a member of their pack and I really couldn't be happier to have finally found them. Now all I need to do is move to America. XD
Phew! All done now.
If anyone has any questions or wants anything cleared up then please ask. Again, apologies if I rambled.