I picked up a pair of barely used Ariat Field boots at the thrift shop the other day for eight dollars. I was so elated with my find, I completely brushed off the fact that they were the old school kind without zippers, and I couldn’t get them on in the store. In my mind, I was wearing jeans and didn’t have boot pulls, but of course when I got home and had breeches and the proper equipment they would slide on just fine. I was so wrong. After a good amount of searching, I unearthed my boot pulls from the bottom of a random trunk and decided to try those babies on. I sprinkled baby power inside the first boot and started pulling…and pulling. And then things went south. The boot got stuck midway up. Like really stuck. It wouldn’t go up and it certainly was not going back down. My boot jack would not remove it. I was hobbling around on one foot, and my leg was losing circulation. The only other person in the house was my teenage son, so I hollered for help in desperation. He rolls his eyes as teenagers do but agreed to help pull the boot off. I start off sitting on the sofa doing the foot on the bum pull thing, but when he grabbed the boot and yanked I somehow ended up on the floor. Son drags me halfway across the living room floor by the boot before declaring that this wasn’t working and he needs tools, and heads for the door asking “why don’t you just wear cowboy boots like a normal person?” My foot is going numb. I tell him to come back, there’s no possible tool that will remove the boot intact and without injury. Just pull harder! I finally scoot over near the open door to the bathroom, grab the door frame and hang on for dear life. “Pull on the heel!” I command. Son gets a running start and jerks on the boot so hard I’m lifted off the floor, but it finally comes loose. I rejoice as the blood flow is restored to my leg. My son is laughing his bum off at this point. I’m pretty sure there’s a permanent dent in my calf, and my bargain find will soon be headed to ebay, where hopefully someone more svelte than myself can pick them up for a song.
I needed that story this morning. Thank you!
Not to enable you, but could you have zippers installed? Not sure how much that would cost.
The only thing that could have made this better is if you had told your son to bend over so you could put your other foot on his butt to push 
You owe me a keyboard!
The story reminds me of when my DD came home from her first year at college to ride with me in the fox hunt opening meet. Unfortunately she had already gained her “freshman fifteen,” and I ended up with her sitting on a tack trunk while I finally took a knife to the boot seam to free her calf. We ended up doing the same to the other boot so she could get them on to ride in the hunt. Later I took them in and had elastic gussets sewn in them.
Elastic gussets and zippers, if the foot fits.
Also, the next time this happens (hopefully never!!), pull your breeches up HARD at the knee. That breaks the vacuum and slims you down juuuuuust a little more to get them off.
God bless zippers. Signed, someone with very large calves
I don’t imagine her foot reached the bottom! 
I’ve had similar incidents, so I’m laughing WITH you, not AT you.
I had old school boots, and the right one was tighter than the left. I somehow got them on, rode, and couldn’t get the right one off. I hobbled around, stuck a hose in the boot. Finally got home and DH wriggled it off for me.
OMG! As someone who still rides in old-ass pull-on boots you have my sympathies. Being stuck in your boots is such a weird panic feeling - like what if they NEVER come off?!?!? Will I have to live like this forever??
Right! I know logically they were only eight dollars, so I could just cut them off and not be out much.⁰ But you can’t just cut good boots! Even if they were cheap and don’t fit😆
No idea if the foot fits, it never got that far🤣
So funny! I had a similar situation once, but lived alone. What do I do? Like, call the fire department or something? I finally got the boot off, using that time-tested technique: lie on your back, leg(s) in the air…
Can you imagine that call to the fire department?
“Hi Firefighter, I’m going to need you to turn around, and bend over so I can put my foot on your butt and push while you pull my boot off. No I’m not joking, that’s just how you do it!”
LOL! When I came home from college (so like a hundred years ago) I tried to pull on my tall boots and got one that badly stuck. My mom tried and tried to get me out of it and couldn’t, so sent me to drive up to the barn (~a mile away) to get a boot jack. I was sure I was going to die (trying to drive a car with a boot half on, and then the added bonus of the pain seemed like a surefire recipe). But somehow I made it to the barn and back only to find that a boot jack does…well…jack all when your boot is that stuck!
Finally in desperation, I had to have my mom take a steak knife to the back seam and cut the boot off. It’s hard to convey the panic, as Indy said, that a stuck boot makes you feel!
I had a very similar experience with my custom Dehner dress boots years ago. They would only go on easily first thing in the morning, but I tried to squeeze into them after work one day. I was home alone and the first boot got stuck halfway on. Same throbbing pain, panic setting in. Somehow I hopped upstairs for my Rescue Remedy because I was starting to feel faint. Desperately looking out the windows for a mailman, random neighbor, anybody to help. Bootjack was useless. Finally I jammed my foot under the bottom of a couch and pulled my leg out.
When trying to pull them off at the barn, for some reason everyone would just disappear…no one wanted my foot on their butt and my boot between their legs.
These stories are making me laugh. I know the pain. Last year I had gained a little weight, and went to a clinic. I was there myself, and got my non-zippered boots on and rode. It was June. Hot. Muggy. I forgot my boot jack. Well, needless to say, I couldn’t get one off! As I was pulling and pulling, I got a cramp in my calf. I had to hobble around on the half-on, half-off boot to try to work the cramp out. I put the boot back on somehow and walked around like this for a while…
Eventually I wiggled it off. Sheesh.
Boots—back in the day versus now:
https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/the-way-things-used-to-be-part-1-boots/
The bread bags!! Worked like a charm every time, and then you had the added bonus of your leg being in a sweaty, plastic suit all day to aid in the suffocation feeling of too-tight boots.
From that article:
Boot pulls: Captain Hook-like metal appendages attached to a perpendicular wooden handle (think less-pointy mini hay bale hook). A necessary tool before boots had zippers.
I’ve been known to use an actual pair of hay hooks to put my boots on when I couldn’t find my boot hooks.
And who remembers boot garters? They were leather straps that looked kind of like spur straps but were used to keep your broken-in boots from sliding too far down your calf.
I loved my custom Dehners despite all the struggles
