Author: Nancy Gyes
Format: Paperback, Full Color
Length: 196 pages
Release Date: 2025

The drills in this book are based on patterns from letters of the alphabet. One of the reasons Nancy chose familiar patterns, like the outline of an alphabet letter, is to aid you in remembering and visualizing the pattern of jumps. The goal is for you eventually to be able to associate the pattern of the letter with the drills associated with it, making it easy for you to go to your backyard or training field and set up a pattern of obstacles, even without the diagram.

These drills were originally published in Clean Run magazine from 2005 to 2007 and then were revamped for the original Alphabet Drills book in 2011. For this new edition of the book, ALL of the drills have been revamped.

Times change and so does agility. Courses in 2025 are wildly different from 14 years ago. Tunnels are no longer scrunched into S curves and tight U shapes. Backside handling is no longer just associated with doing a 270 or boxwork drill. Wraps, backsides, and all kinds of threadles are staples of many current agility courses. This meant a lot of changes to the drills. The spacing on setups has been opened up to match current regulations and Nancy has updated the drills and text to be more representative of our current type of handling.

The alphabet drills can be the basis for building your handling communication system with your dog. The drills for many letters are progressive in nature, so they are useful for all levels of agility handlers. There are drills to help you and your dog learn the basics of front and rear crosses, lead-out skills, threadles, pushes, serpentine handling, pinwheels, 270s, and more—you can truly train the full spectrum of necessary handling skills using these exercises. Regardless of what handling style or system you use, Alphabet Drills will provide years of training ideas for your agility team.

You’ll never have to worry about what to practice again. Just check out the included Drill Index for suggestions based on what you want to work on. Problems getting your dog to do a backside wrap, check out U drills. Review the appendix to understand the difference between backside wraps and backside slices. Wide front crosses? Check out T drills and the front cross descriptions in the appendix. Does your dog spin in the wrong direction when you do a rear cross? Work on J drills.

To buy the E-Book instead of the printed book, click here.

About the Author
Nancy has been involved in training for dog sports for the last 40 years. She was active in competition and pet obedience, tracking, and behavior counseling for pet owners before discovering agility in 1990. Since then she has been a full-time international agility instructor, competitor, seminarian, and coach. She and her husband Jim Basic operate Power Paws Agility in San Jose, California. Nancy and Jim and their dogs have won over 70 first-place trophies at national and world championship events. Nancy has won a total of 12 USDAA and AKC championships, and was the first handler ever to win 4 consecutive USDAA Grand Prix World Championships: Scud in 1998, Riot in 1999, Wicked in 2000, and Riot again in 2001. Nancy was the coach of the AKC/USA World Team from 1996 to 2024, helping that team bring home numerous medals. She was a member of the AKC/USA World Team 7 times (4 years with Scud and 3 years with Riot) and has been on the USA Team for the European Open 3 times with Ace, winning the bronze medal in 2009.