The BHS Training Manual For The PTT

Some books enter the world with a certain swagger. Others arrive carrying a clipboard, wearing sensible boots, and asking whether your stirrups have been checked properly. The BHS Training Manual for the PTT is very much of the second variety: a practical, orderly, faintly terrifying guide to becoming the sort of person who can teach other people how not to fall off a horse.

Written by Islay Auty and published by Kenilworth Press in 2009, this is not just a horse book. It is a horse book with standards. The “PTT” here is the Preliminary Teaching Test, which means this volume occupies that particularly noble corner of publishing devoted to turning equestrian enthusiasm into regulated competence. Loving horses is all very well, it says, but can you explain diagonals, observe a rider’s position, manage a lesson, and remain composed while a thousand-pound animal decides to express an opinion? That is the real question.

And what a wonderfully British object it is. The title alone has the air of a form one must complete in black ink. You can almost hear the distant rustle of jodhpurs and the quiet dread of assessment day. This is a book for those who have moved beyond simply admiring horses from a safe distance and have chosen instead to enter the elaborate, disciplined universe of the British Horse Society, where tack must be correct, instructions must be clear, and nothing, absolutely nothing, should flap unexpectedly.

Islay Auty, of course, is a respected name in the horse world, and the manual reflects that calm, capable authority. It is meant to prepare aspiring instructors for the realities of teaching, not just riding. That means this is a book about communication, structure, observation, safety, and the curious art of saying “shorten your reins” fifty times without sounding personally offended. It takes the wild romance of horses and gently funnels it into lesson plans, technical knowledge and proper procedure, which is either deeply reassuring or mildly tragic, depending on your temperament.

That is part of its charm. Horses have inspired centuries of poetry, paintings, mythology and melodrama. Here, by contrast, they are part of a training framework. There is something delightfully ironic about that. The noble steed of legend, reduced—though not unfairly—to an important but potentially inconvenient participant in a carefully managed educational process. It is the collision of grandeur and admin, and Britain does that better than anyone.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in Good condition, which feels exactly right. Not glossy and untouched like some aspirational lifestyle purchase, but respectable, sound, and ready for work. A Good copy suggests purpose. It may have sat in a tack room, travelled in a car beside a riding hat, or been studied over tea by someone preparing to demonstrate their competence under the watchful eye of the BHS. It has likely seen ambition in action, which is more than can be said for many books.

And let us be honest: there is a special pleasure in second-hand specialist manuals. They carry the ghost of earnest effort. A novel may merely have been read. A book like this was probably used. Underlined. Consulted. Respected. Possibly feared. It belongs to that excellent category of books that once played a direct role in somebody trying to become a more qualified version of themselves.

So this is an ideal find for riders, instructors, collectors of equestrian books, or anyone who enjoys the highly specific seriousness of British hobby culture at its most organised. It is practical, authoritative, and full of the quiet pressure that only a training manual can generate. A book about horses, yes, but also about order, discipline, communication, and the eternal human hope that with enough preparation one might get through the test without public embarrassment.

The BHS Training Manual for the PTT is not a dreamy gallop across open fields. It is the part afterwards where someone asks you to justify your teaching method and check the girth. Which, in its own way, is even more character-building.

Condition: Good. Saddle up, revise thoroughly, and try to look as though this all comes naturally. Sold by Crappy Old Books.

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