The only familiar I remember in any campaign before D&D3 was a cat. In a D&D3.0 campaign, my gnome wizard had a toad familiar, named "Lucky."
The campaign world was such that at night, characters without darkvision could only see 5'. Since my gnome didn't have darkvision, but his toad familiar did, he used the toad as his stand in for taking watch. This was known and accepted by the party. If the toad saw/heard something in the night, it'd wake up its master.
Well, one night while camped on an open grass plains, we got surrounded by a squad of 12 kobold elite commandos (3rd-level sorcerers; we were 3rd-4th-level ourselves). Lucky spotted them when they got within his 60' darkvision.
Lucky alerted my wizard. When my wizard awoke, he couldn't see what was going on -- only that Lucky was scared. My wizard tossed Lucky over to the party half-orc barbarian (with darkvision) to wake him up. Then the kobolds attacked.
The fight saw the death of the half-orc, a special something elf NPC (was essentially a DMPC that we were forced to accept among our group even though we hated her and she hated us). Only my wizard, the party human cleric, and Lucky survived the ambush.
Later, the half-orc and DMPC elf were raised. We were again forced to accept the DMPC elf, but she hated my gnome and especially my toad familiar because she blamed us for her death.
The DM even said her anger was justified because the toad was a dumb choice to serve as watch. No amount of explanation that my gnome wizard -- who could only see 5' -- would have been even worse.
I even bought a shiny stuffed toy frog to sit on my shoulder during our games. I loved Lucky.
I hated that DM and campaign.
Bullgrit