I never set out to be a fashion writer, but here we are. Some of my youngest memories had me wearing cowboy boots. I definitely wore them in grade school. My last pair of boots I bought in college and I got a lot of wear from them until I started getting ingrown toenails. I have worn them now and again, but having surgery on my toes was painful and so I stopped except for very infrequent occasions.

My wife had already decided that our casual renewal was going to involve me wearing western wear. I took it upon myself to buy some new boots so that I had a pair that I would wear more than a couple times a year. So far, it has been a rough go with these new boots.

The first time I wore the boots was my second proposal on the beach. We had already planned on spending the night to take our exchange student out whale watching. I figured that I should get started breaking these boots in so that I would have a nice night on the renewal.

Other than causing ingrown toenails which I attributed to the pointy steel toe, I never had any issues with my old boots rubbing. That is not the case with these new boots which I purchased as square toe to alleviate that problem. I wore my boots for two days and I couldn’t wait to get out of them due to the fact that the pull straps had rubbed my leg raw.

I figured that I was committed at this point, so on the night of our renewal, I put Band-Aids over the area that the pull straps rubbed. That solved that problem for the moment. I have worn the boots several times until we decided to go to Octoberfest. That night I spent about four hours on my feet walking around. My heel started hurting.

When I took my boot off, my heel was raw. I should mention that all of this is really a problem with the right boot, not the left. For that reason, I don’t know if the problem is my right leg or the right boot. I have had zero issues with the left to date. I tried to do research on what others have experienced, and from what I have read, a potential problem is today’s thread.

Apparently, today’s thread contains synthetic material that is much more durable than previous versions. Because it is stronger and tougher, by proxy then it is more abrasive (at least that is what it said on the internet). If we accept that to be true, then it might be possible to add some kind of leather softener or treatment to potentially deal with the rubbing.

I tried these boot on when I walked through the store. It generally starts causing a problem after a couple of hours. If I knew then what I know today, these boots would have gone back to the store. I don’t think that they can be returned after several months of wear. This is something that I never considered to be a problem before these boots.

End Your Programming Routine: I still have my old boots. Part of my intent to buy new boots was to wear boots more, old and new. With these issues, I don’t know if I need to grit my teeth and keep wearing them, hoping that they will break in or give up. I will likely try to wear them more and hope that these are just starting point issues because they should last nearly the rest of my life. I don’t have much helpful advice but consider yourself warned if you are in the market for boots.