Writing to Disney

Howdy Friends,

Writing to Disney today, I need Winnie the Pooh!

Over the past few days we’ve been reviewing the final edits for my next book, It’s for the Horses, An advocate’s musings about their needs, gifts, spirit and care, and I realized I need Winnie the Pooh. The final chapter “Those who shaped me” is stories about Ravishin’ Robbie, Diane Sept, and I close with Winnie the Pooh.

Many of our Coffee Clutch and Facebook friends know why Winnie the Pooh is so important to me, why he’s my hero. Folks who will just be getting to know me by reading It’s for the Horses, won’t know the story of my “room years.” Those horrible years I spent locked in a room as a boy with even the window painted black, the beatings and worse that happened there, and haunt me still today. They won’t know how that tattered old book and little yellowish funny, brave bear and friends carried me away to places I could stop crying.

Here are a few excerpts from “Why ‘Gitty Up’ And Why I Love Winnie the Pooh,”

Winnie The Pooh held my hand in my darkest moments.

I used to pretend that room, with its solitary window painted black, was the Hundred Acre

Wood. Like Pooh, Piglett, Tigger, Kanga, Roo, Eyore and Christopher Robin, my adventures in the Hundred Acre Wood were imaginary, but Pooh was a terrific imaginary guide.

My email signature comes from Pooh Bear. Our daughter, the sweet and terrific Abbie, had a Winnie the Pooh desk calendar a few years ago and on July 17 that year Pooh was dressed as a cowboy and the caption was, “Gitty Up Pooh Bear.” She sent it to me with a note, “Thought you would like this.”

So I latched on to “Gitty Up, Dutch Henry,” and except for the most formal emails, that’s what I use. I often wonder what folks think about that. But just as the spirit of the horse has in fact saved my life, so too did a tiny, yellowish brown, inquisitive, funny and heroic bear hold my hand in the darkest moments.

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There is a half page at the end of Pooh’s story, the very last page of It’s for the Horses. I’m writing to ask Disney permission to have a picture of Winnie the Pooh on that page. He should be there for had he not been there all those years ago, this book may not be here today.

Gitty Up, Dutch Henry