Chapter I
My Life Before My Dad

My story begins on May 1, 1990.  I was born to a loving mother in the hills of Eastern Kentucky.  My mother was owned by a very mean and in my opinion a very ignorant man.  He smelled bad too.  Anyway, I call my mother's owner the "Bearded Redneck" and I never got over the way he treated my sister and I, searching for him my entire life to no avail.  My mother lived with the Bearded Redneck, his wife and seven children, only three of which owned a pair of shoes.  They smelled bad too, especially their feet.  I think this is where my aversion for feet came from, that is, to lick them (humans' feet) like most dogs do.  Anyway, I digress.  We lived in a rundown shack, that is, until we could see, and then the Bearded Redneck moved us and my Mom to a shed outside the house where he kept all kinds of things, mostly stolen, and would make some sort of liquid from a collection of pots and pipes.  The children of the house would come out to see us from time to time and toss us about as if we where some kind of stuffed animal.  Most unpleasant for the most part, although I tried to find some redeeming quality in the youngest girl child, I believe her name was Mary Sue.  She would love on me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear until the Bearded Redneck would admonish her for paying so much attention to me, telling her that I and my sister were "no good for huntin, so they ain't no good for nuthin."  My mother was very loving and did everything she could to nurture my sister and me and my two brothers.

It wasn't long after my sister and I could walk around that the Bearded Redneck took us away from our mother and brothers.  He literally threw my sister and me in the back of his rundown noisy pickup truck and drove us somewhere in the middle of the forest.  As I would come to find out later, he dumped my sister and me in the middle of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Eastern Kentucky in an area named the Red River Gorge.  The experience was both liberating and horrifying.  My sister and I were really glad to be rid of the Bearded Redneck and very sad that we where no longer with our mother and brothers.  And, as we soon came to realize, we were without food.  Not a good thing for two growing and very hungry puppies.