Lindsay Douglass does just about everything with her hoofed friend “Pernoodle,” from jumping over eight-foot walls for horse-show trophies to raising money for kids who can use a break.
“I just lover her,” the 18-year-old Palos Verdes High School senior said of her 13-year-old Dutch Warmblood, whose official name is Pernot but goes by Pernoodle. “I know every mother thinks her children are the best, but really, I know my horse is the cutest.”
And she’s one of the most courageous, which is a key reason Douglass currently ranks second highest on the west coast in the competition to qualify for the North American Junior & Young Rider Championships.
“She’s definitely the bravest horse I’ve ever ridden,” Douglass said. “She has never once stopped with me at a jump. I can gallop her to an eight-foot foot stone wall knowing that she’s just brave, and honest, and she’ll jump her heart out.”
Pernoodle shares her rider’s zeal for competition.
“She loves her job,” Douglass said. “She had competed in Mexico for a long time, and we call her the Mexican warhorse. She’s completely fearless, she loves her job. She loves to jump.”
Junior jumper
Douglass, co-captain of her high school’s Equestrian Team of about 30 riders, took to horses early on. She began riding when she was 5 and began competing when she was 7, starting out in Portuguese Bend and then moving over to Linda Cooper’s barn in Rolling Hills Estates.
In time she moved to Hayden Show Jumping with trainer Mickey Hayden at Laguna Hills, where Pernoodle has lived the past three years.
Last year Douglass flew Pernoodle back to Lexington, Kentucky and jumped her to a silver medal, as part of a four horse-and-rider team, in the 2010 Junior & Young Rider Championships. Following a successful event in the California desert last weekend, the PV pair appears to be headed back to Kentucky for another championship this year.
During the show jumping season Douglass misses about half of every other school week, but manages to maintain valedictorian status.
“It’s tough being caught up, but everyone on the show circuit has to do that,” she said.
Douglass is a daughter of pediatrician Julie Douglass and Craig Douglass, founder of the technology firm Converging Systems. Her sister, Cheryl Douglass, 14, is a figure skater and a freshman at PV High.
Douglass has been accepted into Stanford University and will probably begin there next year. She’s waiting to hear from an East Coast school as well, while her parents root for the much-closer Stanford.
Straight into Compton
After Douglass was elected co-captain of her school Equestrian Team, she spearheaded formation of a support group for the Compton Junior Posse, a nonprofit organization close to her heart.
The Posse itself was founded in 1988 by Mayisha Akbar, who rose from the projects to forge a happy and successful life, thanks in part to the empowerment she felt riding horses.
Through the posse, Akbar strives to keep disadvantaged kids off the streets by getting them onto the backs of horses, offering riding lessons in exchange for good grades. The kids participate in competitions, perform chores such as mucking out horse stalls, and in turn help other kids.
Douglass came to admire Akbar’s work and to rejoice in the universality of horse appeal that the Junior Posse represents, and she was already experiencing the power of horses and riders all headed in the same direction, so to speak.
“I had become an ambassador for the charity Just World International, which functions completely in the horse show world. It was started by Jessica Newman, a regular horse girl like I am, and it’s really, really blown up in last few years and become super successful,” Douglass said.
“Ambassadors wear bright blue jumping coats when we compete, and the shows can be completely filled with kids wearing these coats. I saw the strength in people with mutual interests, it’s awesome,” she said. “I wanted to bring this focus we have on the Equestrian Team to [the Compton Junior Posse], because we’re a real strong group, and our common interests would drive us forward.”
The Compton Junior Posse Support Group was formed, and the work began.
“We have done a few fundraisers,” Douglass said. “We’ve collected used tack for the Posse, which is really expensive to buy. Each of the girls on the team was asked to pick out lightly used tack, and more was collected from some of the barns — saddles, bridles, pants, helmets, blankets, everything a horse and rider need.”
Akbar selects items for use by the Junior Posse, and the rest is sold at horse shows to benefit the posse. So far the effort has raised $6,000 in tack and cash.
Club members also hold individual fundraisers including bake sales and 50-50 raffles, and donate money earned by giving riding lessons.
“Each girl is very passionate about the group because each girl in a way is the leader of her own charity,” Douglass said.
She said the Support Group’s goal is not just to raise funds and provide tack, but to publicize what she describes as a nonprofit effort that is ahead of its time.
“Horseback riding in the United States has evolved into such an elitist and expensive sport and is therefore inaccessible to low-income families,” she said. “…It has been hard for my family to support my riding career so as soon as I found my self in a position of influence at the head of my team it was my first and foremost goal to help bring horses to the kids who otherwise would have no chance of learning all the things horses have taught me.”
Icing on the cake
Over the fall, while Douglass was competing in the U.S. National Equestrian Jumpers Championship at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, she talked about the Compton Junior Posse to the owner of Paddock Cakes, a gourmet maker of horse cookies.
“He got really interested,” she said.
The idea was hatched to sell Paddock Cakes as a Compton Junior Posse Support Group fundraiser. The Support Group went at it, selling boxes of cookies individually and offering them at horse shows. The effort has raised $1,600 for the Junior Posse so far.
“A lot of people saw what we were doing and even if they didn’t want the cookies, they donated money to give to the posse,” Douglass said.
And the equine community undoubtedly approved of an effort that led to cookies in their mouths.
“The horses were definitely into this fundraiser,” Douglass joked.
When Pernoodle is through eating cookies, she’ll be back on the circuit with her rider, participating in a sport that keeps both of them coming back and wanting to win again.
“I’m sure it’s the same with pretty much every sport,” Douglass said. “But the feeling of wining in horse jumping is one of the most satisfying things in the world, because even if you’re on top you might win every third time. You can never really quench your thirst, and there’s the adrenaline, the thrill – and the bond with the animal is amazing.”
