Lifestyle Or Life Sentence: Misplaced boots

HB Community newspapers editor and lifestyler Rachel Wise explores the myths of animal attraction.

Somewhere in my travels last Friday, I misplaced my riding boots.

I'll just stop you there, before you envision a pair of tall, black, shiny, spur-adorned leather boots. Those, I could understand someone taking from the back seat of my car.

No, the boots I am missing are a battered pair of John Bull steel-caps, missing hunks of leather off the toe (courtesy of Gladys and Magnum and testament to why I wear steel-caps), one broken pull-on tab

at the back of the right boot, covered in mud and manure and reeking to high heaven.

Put like that, you'd think I'd be grateful to be rid of them but no, we are friends, my battered boots and I and I miss them dreadfully.

I know I started out with them on Friday morning. I had taken the day off and was, in a round-about way, heading to the stables to ride my horse.

First I had to pack the car with riding gear and eldest daughter's random dog as I was taking the dog to meet a potential new owner. Then I had to add Jake, my chihuahua boy, as younger daughter wanted to borrow him for the day. Then the other chihuahuas Bunnie and Mungo added themselves.

Next I drove to pick up eldest daughter and my baby grandson...they had to accompany the random dog to her potential new home and "settle her in".

At this stage I know I still had my boots.

I know this because the next stop was the stables where Gladys lives, where I pressed the boots into service, mucking out and feeding her before resuming our journey...Which took us to younger daughter's house where I off-loaded elder daughter and grandson and random dog and Jake - who were all going to spend some quality time together while I went to an appointment (I had replaced the boots with respectable footwear by this time).

But when I arrived to my appointment I was, as you sometimes are, a week early.

So I went to ride my horse instead.

Now, I know I still had my boots because I wore them to ride Gladys. I rode her all the way down the road to visit a friend, where I took said boots off at the door. Then it rained and I re-booted myself and rode back again.

That's where the boot thing gets fuzzy.

From the stables I went back to collect all the daughters and dogs and we went shopping. Pretty sure I didn't wear them shopping. Then we delivered random dog to her potential new home, where I know I didn't have my grubby John Bulls on. I would have noticed. So would other people.

Then we went to visit another friend and her new baby horse and Philip the miniature horse - who is ours but who is there babysitting the new baby horse. There I had a wine and grandson got to sit on a pig. As you do.

No recollection of boots there.

Then back to the stables where I fed Gladys and put her into her paddock for the weekend then collected my horse-float as Mum needs it to shift her cows. Didn't have my boots on then as I remember thinking "I don't have my boots on."

Drove back to elder daughter's house where she decided to come to my house for tea, did u-turn, went shopping (again) went home.

Net gain for the day: One extra daughter (younger) home for the weekend. Net loss: One random dog potentially re-homed and one pair of stinky boots mysteriously missing.

On Monday I looked for my boots and found I had somehow gained a pushchair - still in the boot of my car - but lost footwear.

I looked in all the places I might have put them and some places I wouldn't have put them. On Tuesday I looked in all the same places in the hope they might have materialised. They hadn't.

My boots are still missing. But the random dog has come back again...not suitable for the potential new owners.

If you see my boots let me know. I will swap them for the dog.