The Dreaded Two Stride

I had given Emma the heads up that my parents were coming to the barn to watch the Sunday lesson and we needed to make me look good. Cause that's what it's ALL about right?

There we were, just after the flat warm up, with a grid, outside line, and two stride. Emma asked us to canter into the first fence of the grid at an angle, making a shallow loop around the second fence, and catch the third.
Then we were asked to canter the grid (I'll add that in our Friday morning lesson Emma told me that the lines were set long and quite a few horses had difficulty getting through). Gulp. My Dad got a video- ignore my arms doing a solid round of the "chicken dance" aka flapping. I tend to override with my upper body when I get nervous about making it out of lines alive.
It actually went fairly well. 
Who is this *crazy cantering all the fences* fiend?

Well then Emma sets the two stride and instructs me to canter down the four and catch the two, Gulp again as I happened to know that Ellie had not previously been schooled over a two stride with these trainers. Is she trying to kill me?

I canter the four (again- who am I?) and come down to a walk. I'm exhausted and I'm not sure I can handle the stress of the two stride (all you adult ammys know where I'm coming from). By this time the 10am lesson, all six of them, had shown up and were in the ring warming up. I start to hear a chorus of "you can do it" and "you got this girl" from the KMT team. What a great group!

So we gathered our muster and came around the corner ready to tackle this combo! She jumped in, took a hard look at the second fence, and got out in three, knocking both fences down.

The second time around she was wiggly baby dodging left and right- so again we came out in three.

One. More. Time. Galloping around and we got the two! It was awesome and everyone cheered! It felt great to challenge myself and execute in the end!

Elbows to the sky!!!

Well deserved rinse!