A Windham horse trainer is planning to hold a celebration Sunday for eight show horses that died in a Windham barn fire early Wednesday morning.

“The horses were not only show horses; they were family and will be greatly missed,” said Crystal Stover, a Windham horse trainer who released a statement on behalf of Dana and Amy Sterling, owners of Spruce Hill Farm. “They won’t be remembered for their show records but for the smiles they brought to everyone’s faces.”

The Sterlings boarded and trained the horses at Spruce Hill Farm, resulting in awards at shows across New England. The couple owned one of the horses, Zeus, that died in the fire, and cared for the remaining seven for the horses’ owners, many of whom can be seen posing with awards on the stable’s Web site.

As a way of saying goodbye, the owners of the horses, as well as others touched by the animals, will gather Sunday, Dec. 14, at 1 p.m. at Stover’s home at 508 Gray Road in Windham.

“No one ever thinks that anything like this will happen to them,” Stover said in her statement. “It is an utter tragedy. As all of you know, these horses were very well loved and taken care of. Sometimes there are no answers as to why this happens to good people.”

Lost as well as the horses were all the tack and equipment in the barn. Amy Sterling and the other horse owners lost everything, Stover said, from manure forks to lead ropes to blankets. A fund has been set up, and donations can be sent to Stover at her home.

The fire itself came suddenly and took the barn quickly, said Windham Fire Chief Charlie Hammond.

Firefighters responded to the call at 190 Falmouth Road, between Albion and Nash Roads, just before 5 a.m., Hammond said. By that time, the barn was already a lost cause, he said.

“There was fire coming through the roof of the building. The building had fire coming out of all sides,” said Hammond.

A female resident of the property tried to put out the fire and suffered a burn on her hand, Hammond said. She was treated at the scene, he said.

The damage was too extensive to determine a cause, Hammond said, and nothing about the fire was suspicious. The Fire Marshal’s Office would not be called in to investigate, he said.

“There is so little of the building left,” Hammond said.

Firefighters had to run a water line around 2,000 feet from the corner of Nash Road to the barn, which stands uphill at the end of a long, dirt driveway on the east side of Falmouth Road, Hammond said.

“That takes two trucks and that takes time,” he said. “Then you’ve got to fill it with water and pump it.”

By 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, the fire crews had left the scene. Dana Sterling stood outside the smoldering remains of the 36-by-72-foot barn.

Some of the beams, now blackened, still stood, marking the spot where sturdy walls had stood just hours before. Inside the structure, red and blue tarps covered the bodies of the horses, which Sterling planned to bury this afternoon.

“I just can’t believe how much is gone,” he said.

The barn, about eight years old and containing horse stalls, a tack room and a grain room, was well-maintained, Sterling said. There was not much inside the barn to fuel a fire, he said.

“My best guess is it’s something electrical,” Sterling said. “That barn was just spotless. There was only enough hay for a day.”

A fire at 190 Falmouth Rd. in Windham destroyed a barn Wednesday morning, killing the eight horses inside.