I vowed to never buy another pair of boots without zippers after I was stuck in my brand new Konig dressage boots for more than an hour. Actually, I was stuck in just one.

I had just gotten the boots and was wearing them around the house to break them in. My husband was out of town. After about an hour, I decided that the backs of my knees had suffered long enough and I decided to take them off.

The right boot came off without a hitch. The left boot was another story. It moved down my leg a few inches and then . . . my boot jack broke. There it sat: not on, not off, and not moving. As I recall, this happened about 8 p.m. so I was not in a position to go buy another boot jack. The boot was on too tight to get my boot hooks back in (to pull it on) and it was off just enough to make walking difficult. To make matters worse, my left leg now throbbed as the boot was cutting off the circulation in my calf.

I spent some time contemplating why I had thought semi-custom boots were a good idea. I wondered whether I would sleep that night given the state of my leg. I contemplated the look that would appear on my client’s face the next morning when I showed up for my scheduled meeting. It might be amusing . . . for them!

I contemplated knocking on a neighbor’s door but decided that I didn’t know anyone well enough to ask them to pull my boot off. Finally, I lay on my back with me feet up in the air. After about half an hour my leg stopped throbbing and I was able to inch the boot down by wedging my foot under the bed.

All in all, it was quite an evening.

And yes, I was able to wear the boots after they stretched out a bit. In fact I wore them for about 8 years until having had two children, my feet grew to big for them!