Alphabet Drills

by Nancy Gyes
£20.00

The jumping drills in this book are based on patterns from letters of the alphabet. Their purpose is to help you become more imaginative when setting up practice drills for yourself, or for your students, and to familiarise you with common obstacle patterns seen on agility courses. Each letter focuses on specific handling skills or dog skills, and uses a minimal amount of space and a minimal number of jumps (5 jumps is the average).

The intent of using a familiar pattern for each setup, like the outline of an alphabet letter, is to aid you in remembering each pattern of jumps, so that eventually you can associate the pattern of the letter with the associated drills. Alphabet drills are designed so that they are useful for all levels of agility handlers. If you’re new to the sport, there are drills to help you and your dog learn the basics of front and rear crosses, lead-out pivots, pull throughs, serpentine handling, pinwheels, 270s, and more—you can truly train the full spectrum of necessary handling skills with this book. If you’re an advanced competitor, you’ll find more technical drills for maintaining and tuning up your skills, as well as problem solving.

Regardless of which handling method you use, Alphabet Drills will provide years of material for maintaining your agility skills and also training new skills. You’ll never have to worry about what to practice again! Problems getting your dog in the correct entrance of the tunnel? Do the R drills for a week. Wide front crosses or problems with lead-out pivots? T is your drill. Does your dog spin in the wrong direction when you do a rear cross? Work on J drills.