Today I am a happy horse who is spending the day in the field with my two friends Jay and the Big Baby. We are eating and eating and eating. We love eating so much.
I am also a happy horse because I have good friends who are peoples too. One of my good friends is Leslianne. She was the very first people to join the Honeycutt Nation and so I love her very much. I love all the peoples who’ve joined the Honeycutt Nation very much, but I love Leslianne a little bit more because she was the first one. That is a thing that is very special to me.
Strider
Do you know Strider? Strider’s house caught on fire last year, and Strider was very hurt. His back was burnt and he lost a lot of his hairs and his skin too. He is slowly getting better, but it is still very important that he not stand in the sun because the sun will hurt his back. It is very hard to be a horse that cannot go into the sun! Poor Strider has to stay in his new little house a lot, and that is very hard because he is a very big horse — even bigger than the Big Baby!
Today Leslianne told us that she wants to help make a special blanket for Strider to wear that will keep the sun from hurting his back! Leslianne is a thing called a Materials Scientist, do you know this thing? I don’t know this thing, but what I do know is that she knows a fabric that helps peoples with burns and she wants to make a blanket from this fabric for Strider. My mom and her friends at SAFE are so happy because they love Strider and want him to have a normal horse life. Leslianne wants Strider to have a normal horse life too, and that is why she is helping.
I can’t help make a blanket for Strider, but I can help by bringing wonderful peoples like Leslianne to SAFE and teaching them about pointy horses and letting them know how much they can help. That makes me very happy because if there is one thing I love more than hays, it’s helping.
There is room in Honeycutt Nation for more wonderful peoples like Leslianne…peoples just like you. Everyone has a special thing they know or can do, and when we work together, we can make the world a better place for horses. My mom talks to me a lot lately about the wonderful peoples that make up SAFE. She is very happy that there are so many wonderful peoples who are part of SAFE. I am glad that this is true because when my Mom is happy, then I am happy too.
Today is a very good day.
Today is a day which is bright and sunny with no rain to be found! So that made today a very good day to start my painting for HeART of the Horse. I am very happy with the painting so far. It is not completely done. I have a few more special touches to add to it before it is all the way done.
Mom says that the paint I used for my painting is non-toxic, which made it okay for me to lick my painting. Also, the cat came by while we were working and ate some paint while my palette was sitting on the ground. Mom hopes that non-toxic is another way of saying “non barf-inducing.” Otherwise her little house may end up pink on the inside.
My painting will be part of thing at HeART of the Horse called Select Sixty Four, do you know this thing? It means that I made a little painting and other artists made little paintings and all the paintings together will be this many paintings: 64. They will go on a wall together for everyone to see, and then people will trade dollars for the little paintings and take them home. The dollars will go to help the pointy horses!
Do you want to come to HeART of the Horse and maybe trade your dollars for my little painting? You need a thing called Ticket, and you should probably buy Ticket right now before Tickets are all gone! HeART of the Horse will be on May 12 and there will be food to eat (no tasty, tasty grain though) and many wonderful Arts and other things for you to trade dollars to SAFE for. Get Ticket and see some of the great stuff at this website: http://heart.safehorses.org
Here's Jay
Mom is unhappy because yesterday I pinned my ears at Jay and made him go away. In the Before, it was always Jay who made me move my feet, so for me to make him move his feet is Different. Jay is getting older, and he may not always be the boss of everyone like he was in the Before. I can’t tell Mom if I am going to be the boss of Jay now, because I don’t know yet. The Big Baby is already the boss of Jay, but I’m the boss of the Big Baby, so if I end up being the boss of Jay, I will be the boss of everyone. That is a lot of responsibility. Am I ready for that? I do not know.
Jay is the oldest which means he is this many years: 20. That is not so many years for some horses, but Jay is a black horse who is slowly turning white! He still likes to run and play just as much as the Big Baby, so I am thinking maybe he is not so old after all.
But old horses need to know that where they are is where they will stay, and that you will not get tired of them and send them away! Many SAFE horses were old horses that were sent away, and that is not a very nice thing. If you have an old horse, please give that horse a place to live that is forever because it is very hard to be an old horse who is sent away from his home.
Today the man who scrapes my feet came again. Usually he scrapes my feet in the barn aisle, but the barn aisle is still full of hays, so there is no room for foot scraping. So we did the foot scraping out in the driveway instead.
See how good I am?
Scraping in the driveway is a thing that is Different, and I already told you
how horses feel about Different. But I was a good boy and I stood quietly for the scraping man. Jay and the Big Baby ran around like a couple of goofballs because of the Different that was happening.
Mom wants you to notice how long the rope is from my face harness to her hand! Very, very long is how long it is! I may be a wild thing who runs away when the icky tube of medicine comes out, but I am a very good boy for the scraping man. When he asks for my foot, I give him my foot. When I am a good boy, the foot scraping goes very quickly, then I go back to my little house to enjoy my tasty grain.
Oh friends, you will not believe what the Big Baby did!
Do you know the Big Baby? His name is Chance and he is tall and young; in other words, a big baby. He is a horse called a Thoroughbred and like many Thoroughbreds, he is too curious for his own good. If there is a thing that the Big Baby can get into, you can be sure he will get into it. He loves to play with sticks and splash in the water, and he makes Mom laugh and laugh.
But Mom was not laughing when she came in the barn and saw this:
What happened to the hays?!
Those don't go there!
The Big Baby reached into the barn with his big long neck and threw the hay bales all around! He ate many hays too, even when it was not dinner time! He was a Bad Big Baby. He made a mess of the lovely, lovely hays.
The Big Baby loves his sticks
Mom was sad because hays are very heavy and hays need to be in a nice stack like they were before the Big Baby threw them around. I was appalled at the lack of self-control the Big Baby showed. I know he is young, but that is no excuse to throw hay bales. The Big Baby just pretends he doesn’t understand what he did wrong, and so Mom forgives him. But the next time I am with him, I will bite him to remind him not to throw hay bales.
Today the hay man came with many, many hays for me and Jay and the Big Baby to eat. When the hay man comes, there is a lot of banging because the hays go up to the top of my little house, and the banging noise means that many, many hays are being stacked up there for us to eat.
Helping myself!
But the was a problem with the hay man because he has a thing called Hays Elevator that moves the hays to the top of our house, and Hays Elevator broke before all the hays were stacked up there! It was starting to rain, so Mom told hay man to stack the rest of the hays inside the bottom of the barn.
In come the rest of the hays, and a stack was made in the middle of the barn. At first the stack was short but then it got taller and then….I could reach in and eat the hays!
If I can help myself to the hays, I can save Mom from having to feed me three times a day! This makes me very happy because I get to eat the hays and be helpful to Mom at the same time!
Saddest Horse in the World
Alas, Mom did not find this arrangement to be helpful after all. She went and got a thing to cover the hays, and then I could not help myself to hays any more.
I gave Mom big eyes but she just laughed and said, “Oh Honeycutt! If I let you eat all the hays you want, you would be as big as a house!”
There is a human saying called “Too much of a good thing…” — do you know that saying? I love hays so much that there could never be too much, but I’m just a horse so I don’t understand moderation.
The world is awash
In water, water, water
Pouring from the sky
My hooves are so wet
My paddock is a river
Please stop, please stop, please!
Chunks of white have been falling from the sky since Before Breakfast and now After Breakfast. It is cold and everything is very wet. The Big Baby acts like he’s never seen chunks of white before. His eyes are very big.
The lights in Mom’s little house are flickering, so we will have to finish this blog post very fast and send it on its way.
I hope that wherever you are there are not chunks of white falling from the sky and if there is that you stay in your little house where it is not so cold and wet.
Since today is such an awful rainy day, I have decided to cheer everyone up by telling you about my three new friends. These new friends have joined the Honeycutt Nation to help us take care of our special horse, which is the SAFE horse called Shay. (Do you know this horse?) Shay is doing very well so we are doing a very good job taking care of her!
My first new friend is Meg. Meg lives very far away in a strange place called Boston, but she loves the SAFE horses and is always helping them. Meg is a lot like my second new friend who is Beth. Beth lives very far away in a strange place called Alaska, but she is also a nice person who is always helping the SAFE horses. My third new friend is Rosana. Rosana does not live very far away in a strange place, but she says that she likes my stories and that makes me a very happy horse.
Thank you to all my new friends! Together we will help Shay get better.
Poem Book, by Honeycutt
If you are not a member of the Honeycutt Nation, it is never too late to join us. You can give us 10 dollars every month (or more dollars if you want to!) and we will use those dollars to help SAFE horses. We are still having Incentive — do you remember Incentive? Incentive is that when 25 people join the Honeycutt Nation, I will draw one name and that person will get a copy of my Poem Book that I wrote! My Poem Book is very, very special. It has a hard cover and is filled with pictures of me and poems that I have written. Here is what the Poem Book looks like on the outside————–>
We have 15 members of the Honeycutt Nation. I am going to change Incentive and say that if FIVE MORE PEOPLES join the Honeycutt Nation, I will do the drawing for the copy of my Poem Book.
When Mom comes out to give us our breakfast (or dinner or second dinner), we come into the barn to help her remember to give us our tasty, tasty grain. Everyone wants to be the first to get tasty grain, but Mom says that is notpossible because there are three of us.
Most of the time, Mom feeds grain like this:
By age (oldest horse first) = Jay then Me then the Big Baby
But there are many other ways to decide, such as:
Name order = Big Baby, then Honeycutt, then Jay
Number of white feets = Jay (barely one white feet) then Me (3 white feets) then Big Baby (4 white feets)
Size of blaze = Jay (star with stripe) then Me (perfect seahorse blaze) then Big Baby (huge messy blaze)
Color = Big Baby (Bay) then Me (Chestnut) then Jay (Dark Bay)
Helllloooooo baby!
All these ways mean that I never get fed first! The only way that I get fed first is if I nicker like a foghorn because Mom loves it when I do that and always gives me a reward, which is sometimes to be fed first. “Oh Honeycutt!” I hear you say, “Why not nicker like a foghorn every day then?” The reason is because if I did it every day it would not be special and then Mom wouldn’t be so delighted when she heared me. I can wait and be fed second if it means that there is something special I can do for Mom once in a while.
Honeycutt is me, and I am a horse. I am helpful, handsome and I am the best at bucking, painting and poems. I am lucky to be a SAFE horse, and I want all horses everywhere to be as lucky as me. This is my website and my blog, where I talk a lot about eating and also helping.
