NORTHAMPTON — Martha Stewart was well behaved on Wednesday.

“She’s always good,” Jillian Peek, 16, said. “But today she did particularly well. Nice and quiet.”

Peek was not talking about Martha Stewart the celebrity homemaker. Martha Stewart is a horse, and Peek is a competitor at the 78th New England Regional Morgan Horse Show at the Three County Fairgrounds.

The show began in 1939 and has taken place in Northampton since 1950, but 2017 is the first year the show has partnered with a local charity. Money raised at several special events during the weeklong horse show will be donated to the Hampshire Regional YMCA’s Livestrong initiative, a 12-week program for cancer survivors.

“Horse shows in general can be sort of self-serving events,” said Carolyn Sebring, a co-chairwoman on the board for the show. “So I’m very proud to be doing something bigger than a horse show here this year.”

The showcase fundraising event is Thursday night’s Pro-Am Equitation Challenge, where teams of professional trainers and amateur riders will both ride an equitation workout, a pattern of tasks and movements for the horse and rider to complete.

Peek, Sebring and Martha Stewart will compete as a team in the challenge, Sebring said. Each team raises money by asking for friends and family to pledge money to their ride.

Barbara Irvine, who is on the show’s committee and helped organize the pro-am challenge, said more than $15,000 has already been donated by the 13 registered teams. The team from her own barn had raised more than $3,000.

“It just so happens that the CEO of the local YMCA, Julie Costello, is very involved with Morgan horses herself and is competing here,” Irvine said. “So we are all very excited that we could make this happen.”

The New England Regional Morgan Horse Show is the second-largest Morgan horse show in the world, and still one of the most revered, said Art Perry, a Morgan horse breeder originally from Massachusetts, now living in California.

Perry said he attended this show for the first time when he was 12 years old. He is now 80 and has been coming to the show for 68 years.

“This show is a proving ground for a lot of young horses and riders,” Perry said. “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. To my mind, it is still the most exciting show for me.”

Perry sat in the grandstands of the main arena and watched two Morgan horses in the Park Saddle Junior Exhibitor class. The horses were fast and high-stepping, with their knees snapping up to nearly meet their chests. The riders wore coats with long tails flapping behind them. “Dancing Queen” plays on an organ.

Part of what makes a Morgan horse appealing, Perry said, is its versatility. Morgan horses are ridden in all kinds of equestrian disciplines, including hunt seat, saddle seat, and western seat. They pull carriages and they are ridden over fences.

Plenty of people besides Perry see the appeal of the Morgan horse. The show in Northampton offers more than 50 different classes for competitors on any given day. More than 400 horses are registered for competition this week.

Peek said she thinks the horses are well-loved not just because of the different things they can do, but also because of how friendly they are.

“They’re the Labrador retrievers of horses,” she said, while Martha Stewart rubbed her nose on Peek’s shoulder. “They always want to be right in your pocket.”

The New England Regional Morgan Horse Show is free and open to the public. It finishes Saturday evening.

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