For years, Carl Bledsoe made a name for himself—and a pretty good living—using painful, even illegal techniques while training Tennessee Walking Horses to win high-profile, so-called “big lick” competitions. But with a stroke of his pen, he transformed himself from lifelong big licker to a highly sought-after advocate for Walkers and other gaited horses.
That transformation was more gradual than it seemed, of course, but as Bledsoe says, the change was for the best—for the horses and for his own peace of mind.
“The old expression, ‘You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig,’ encompasses my story,” he says. “I was the pig, and over my lifetime, there is no way to describe the amount of lipstick we had to apply.”
Carl Bledsoe teaching a natural horsemanship clinic in Brooksville, Fla.
COURTESY TRACY ZETTELMEIER