Wise Horsemanship at Freedom Farm: Remembering Wendy Comstock

Saturday, August 8, 2026

Remembering Wendy Comstock

by Mary Gallagher

Wendy Comstock and Nina

As many of you know, over the past 8 years, Freedom Farm has had a great friend in Wendy Comstock, owner of Wensleydale Farms in Yamhill, Oregon, where she bred beautiful, talented, well-minded horses. With her recent passing, I find myself reviewing a remarkable friendship and working partnership, as over those years she sent many colts and a few other special horses to me for training. So I thought I’d share an appreciation of this special friendship journey, and more than a few photos from along the way.

For me, personally—well, Wendy and I had so many things in common it was just a matter of time until our paths crossed. And so they did in 2018 when she attended a Joe Wolter clinic we hosted. Wendy and I shared a passion for high performance training, achieved naturally. Joe Wolter—a student of Ray Hunt and Bill and Tom Dorrance, and leading trainer and clinician in the high performance cow horse world—gave us exactly the coordinated opportunity we needed to meet and really connect.

Our connection was always through the spirit of the horse. Wendy was so precise in her approach to everything. She knew the type of horses she wanted to bring into the world and did it. Through her own research and relationships with the right breeders, she consistently blessed the horse community with gorgeous, talented, kind equine companions. She sought a natural way to communicate with the horses, and that’s what drew her to me. Wendy believed in my methods in handling horses—working out of a herd, supporting and developing horses’ courage and strength, relying on barefoot soundness–and she was fully on board with all of it.

From left: Oliver, Wendy, Marcus, me, Jackson, and our Lincoln

So from our first meeting, Wendy entrusted all her babies’ training to me. I was deeply honored and it has been a blast, let me tell you. Best of all, over the course of these 8 years and 13 colts grew a wonderful friendship. We loved each other’s company and grew to depend on each other in many ways. I think in Wendy, I found the perfect big sister. So many of the things I struggled with, she was great at, and I was glad to do my part, helping her practice natural horsemanship. On the surface, we were very different people, but I’ve come to think we were kind of cut from the same cloth. Other folks might wonder how that could be, since we were so different, but it’s like I was the pattern and she was the stitching—we needed each other and I so appreciated her ability to stitch things together in a meaningful way.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I do know that Wendy is in it, through me and the horses she raised and entrusted to everyone here at Freedom Farm.* I’m not exaggerating when I say that everything is better in my life because of our friendship, and I’m carrying her with me, moving these horses forward to their best life.

*Wendy’s horses: Zeus, Harriet, Einstein, Clementine, Jackson, Percy, Ruby, Mo’czart, Nina, Ja’czmine, Jete’, Lorenzo, Oliver, and Marcus.

Wendy's horses