He Performs Like a Horse Possessed : Equestrian: Beelzebub, owned and ridden by Valerie Parr of Santa Ana, places fourth in individual show jumping.

He has an electric fan to keep cool, a portable Jacuzzi to keep loose and a personal attendant to help him keep fit, trim and looking good. Despite all this, Beelzebub is not completely satisfied.

He wants another carrot and he wants it now.

He whinnies, snorts, and kicks the door of his stall until his owner and rider, Valerie Parr, finally gives in.

“Oh, you spoiled horse!” Parr, a 33-year-old Santa Ana resident, says as she pulls the last carrot from a bag. “This is your last one. Now be good!”

It is Sunday morning at the L.A. Equestrian Center, and Parr, Beelzebub and groom Michael Madison are waiting out the hours before Olympic Festival competition resumes. Saturday night, the first night of equestrian competition, Parr and Beelzebub led the West to victory in the team show jumping event. Now, there isn’t much to do but relax and stay out of the hot sun.

It’s easy to see that Parr, a paralegal by profession, is in her element among the dusty stalls. She’s been riding horses since she was an 8-year-old growing up in Hawaii. Her mother, who participated in fox hunts in her native Wales, encouraged Parr’s equestrian pursuits from the start, and continues to provide support--financial as well as moral--for her daughter.

Even as a toddler, Parr seemed born to ride.

“When I was 2, my mother bought this big ol’ bounce-up-and-down toy horse. They couldn’t get me off of it; I’d ride for hours,” Parr said. “And then I’d set up show jumping courses in our back yard. My grandpa would build the jumps and I’d make our Dalmatian jump them.”

Her parents bought her her first horse, a big, strong thoroughbred named Jamaica Bay, when she was 15. But riding Jamaica Bay was no pleasure cruise. Looking back, Parr says she is surprised the animal didn’t kill her.

“I was like this little peanut--4-6 and maybe 80 pounds--and he bucked me off every single day, no lie. After three weeks, I broke my collarbone and my mom said, ‘That’s it. You’ll never ride that horse again.’

“He was a pig, a yucker,” Parr said. “But hey, he was pretty.”

Her next horse, Bangor, had average skills but a kind heart. Parr bought him in Santa Barbara for $1,000--the typical price for an “old yuck,” as Parr describes it. She flew him home to Oahu and won every competition she entered. Two years later, while Parr was vacationing in England, the horse got spooked by a dog, ran into a fence, and punctured a lung. Parr’s father called with the bad news. The horse was turning blue from a lack of oxygen. The animal had to be destroyed.

Since then, Parr has owned and ridden: Beat The System, a former thoroughbred race horse; Geoffrey Z., a supposedly superior show horse that needed a lot of work but eventually sold for a big profit, and Bengali, an older horse that knew the ropes and helped Parr win her first Pacific Coast Horse Shows Assn. title in 1987.

Today, she owns Rumor Has It, another former race horse that has won each of eight competitions this year, and Beelzebub, a horse with a sweet disposition despite its devilish name.

“I was raised Catholic, so when I told my mother what his name was she was like, ‘Beelzebub? Oh dear!’ ” Parr said. “The only one who’s into (the name) is my 16-year-old son, but you know how teen-age boys are with that Satan-worship stuff.”

Parr relates well to teen-agers, which is fortunate. Some of the top riders are half her age. At the press conference after Saturday’s competition, Parr sat with her teen-aged teammates and braced herself for the inevitable question.

Said Parr: “It was like, ‘How old are you, Lauren?’ ‘Fourteen.’ ‘How old are you, Gaby?’ ‘Sixteen.’ ‘How old are . . .’ ‘Don’t even ask!’

“But I’ll keep riding as long as I can keep my mind together and stay fit.”

Parr, who owns two dogs, a cat and a parrot and is married to an attorney who doesn’t care for animals, says she doesn’t get attached to her horses because the sport is also a business. Quality show horses run from $100,000 to more than a half million dollars, she said, and care, feeding and travel expenses run at least $30,000 annually.

“It’s like with Beelzebub,” Parr said, “I love him, but you have to be realistic. When we get to the point where he can’t teach me anything, he has to go on to someone else that can learn from him. Otherwise, it’s a waste of a good horse.”

And Beelzebub’s been just that. Parr said the 10-year-old gelding has taught her more than any other horse. And though he is often feisty and has uncooperative moments before competition, on the show ring floor, Beelzebub is a horse possessed.

Sunday night, Parr and Beelzebub placed fourth in the individual show jumping event. Parr, who calls the Olympic Festival the highlight of her career, said she was disappointed at first with the fourth-place finish but gives credit to her partner.

“I was pretty depressed,” Parr said. “But I have to say this horse has jumped out of its skin for me.”

Which is a pretty good trick, even for a Beelzebub.