06/01/2026
Thank you to everyone that attended yesterday’s show and celebration of Peggy’s retirement! What an amazing day it was! From old friends, some of whom rode with Peggy more than sixty or so years ago, to some new additions (our youngest attendee was under 4 months old), it was a beautiful day to celebrate Peggy’s amazing career, her decades of teaching, and all of her contributions to the local horse community. The turnout was more than we could have ever expected when we started planning this event, and we could not be more grateful to those that came from far and wide to celebrate with us! It was a wonderful time to connect with old barn friends, meet some folks from “before my time”, and watch as the next generation, of what will always be the extended Winter Glen family, takes to the ring. We appreciate everyone that has made this journey worth celebrating!
There are a few people that deserve an extra thank you as well:
When we decided that a horse show was the best way to celebrate Peggy, it was important for us to pick someone amazing to judge for us. When we reached out to Joy Dunn, she was immediately as excited as we were! I don’t think there was ever a year that Joy wasn’t part of our line up of judges, so it just made sense for her to judge our final show as well. As a gift to Peggy, Joy donated her time to judge yesterday, and we couldn’t be more grateful!
I’d also like to thank Justin Barnhart of JB Horseshoeing! Besides the amazing work Justin does to keep our horses at their soundest (which is not an easy feat with some of our senior crew), he also donated the High Point Trainer Award of $250 for yesterday’s show. Congratulations to Nora from Dutch Manor who was the clear winner!
As always, Kathy Strait did an amazing job of overcoming our lack of WiFi, dealing with our wonderful grooming stall accommodations, and keeping things organized as our show secretary. Kathy also generously donated her time yesterday for our final show, which was very appreciated!
Thanks to our food truck Given To Fry and to Logan’s Custom Woodworking for coming out and making the day extra special as well!
And we can’t forget the work that often happens behind the scenes and without thanks. As most everyone knows, Peggy is an exceptional gardener, so before we could have a show, we needed a little help to get things up to Peggy’s gardening standards. Thankfully Zack was kind enough to come over and get Peggy’s gardens back to beautiful in time for the day! Also, that footing sure didn’t groom itself - Dave did an incredible job of making sure the ring was dragged to perfection before the show started! Thank you to you both for getting everything looking amazing for such a special day!
As always, we can’t thank Alex Zhang enough for yesterday and all of the days that he has come out and taken such amazing photos. So many of my favorite horses, favorite people and favorite memories have been caught and frozen in time by Alex’s incredible talent and timing, and yesterday was no different. Not only did he capture beautiful horse show photos, but he took some amazing pictures of Peggy and her guests as well!
The biggest thanks of all goes to the committed Winter Glen crew who went above and beyond to help make yesterday the incredible day that it was: Stephanie Kot, Sue McKay, Judi Stott, Nicole Young, Jessica Zelanko, Taylor Cuomo, and Jim Van Horne. When I mentioned this crazy idea of having “just one more show” I never could have dreamt of the support I would get and hard work that this team would take on…and then we added a retirement party…and then we added a tack sale…and then we needed cake for 200 people…and then we thought a food truck would be nice…and we needed fences moved and set…and we needed the tack for the sale cleaned…and on and on. Thank you to every one of you for putting so much love and care into everything we accomplished for this event and for helping to get my vision of this celebration across the line! It was perfect thanks to all of you!
And finally, thank you to Peggy for your amazing contributions to the horse world and just as importantly, for bringing us all together! We all started riding because we loved horses, but we gained so much more from our years with you than we ever could have ever imagined. Thank you for everything! Happy Retirement!
