Hoof Beats: Key Keeper
My key problem started when I swapped my Western saddle for a dressage saddle and bought my first pair of English riding pants and boots. I’d always loved knee-high black leather boots. Not to nay-say Nancy Sinatra, but “These Boots” were not “Made for Walkin’.” If they fit correctly, getting them on and off is strenuous enough to qualify as exercise. Breeches fasten at the ankle, under your socks and boots. That means sliding your foot inside a plastic bag and then using a boot pull. To get them off, you need a boot jack and a friend. But since I don’t compete— I trail ride — I eventually decided I could live without the boots and the exercise.
So I switched to short boots and what are usually called jodhpurs, boot-cut pants that fit over your short boots instead of inside them. If the boots have a zipper, they’re called jodhpur — or jod — boots. If you lace them up, they’re paddock boots. After a mud season or two, the laces will break, and the boots will look bad because there’s no easy way to clean the dirt that accumulates between the laces and the leather beneath them Jod boots are easy on, easy off, although when you wear thick socks, you may have to use a shoe horn. Or buy thinner socks.
Back to riding pants. Most have so much built-in stretch that they’re very comfortable to wear. But expect the unexpected. One afternoon I went riding with a neighbor. We had just passed through a stand of sage brush when I felt as though somebody had unzipped one leg of my riding pants. I glanced down. From my thigh to the knee patch, my pant leg was unraveling. Apparently a branch had poked a hole in my pants and found a seam. My friend asked if I wanted to go back. I told her I didn’t mind coming apart on the trail, but if she did, we could turn back. She laughed, and we kept going.
Except for the suede patches that help you to stick to the saddle, English riding pants have no embellishments. They look less like sportswear and more like the second-skin tights all females seem to wear these days. Even when they shouldn’t. My first pair of jods fit like one of the Kardashians had designed it. No pockets. So I bought a second pair, from a different company. This one had one pocket — the size and shape of a postage stamp. As long as I had horses living at home with me, I could get by with stuffing a Kleenex into this so-called pocket, although my jods were stretched so tight the Kleenex was mainly in shreds by the time I pulled it out. And then we bought a new “keyless” car with a fob, and my problem got worse.
As soon as John and I bought a house in Colorado, I moved Boo to a boarding stable because I would have to decide what to pack from a house we’d lived in for 20 years. The day Boo moved into her new digs, I sat down with the manager to go over the paperwork and realized I would be sharing a tack locker with four other people. The manager gave me a key. Finally — a reckoning. Where could I keep my fob and my tackroom key when I rode?
I could stash my purse in the car, but if I locked the car, I couldn’t unlock it again — even though my fob was in my purse. (Yes, I did that once.) In other words, I had to keep the fob and tackroom key somewhere on my body. The fob is big and unwieldy, and it refused to fit into the so-called “pocket” of my jod pants. Could I wear a shirt with pockets? (What if fob and key bounced out?) What about a shirt that buttoned or zipped close? (They don’t exist, unless I wanted to wear a Western shirt, which I didn’t.) Could I wear them around my neck on a lanyard? (If Boo shied, I’d probably fracture my collarbone.) Ride with a fanny pack? (Not practical.) I finally found a gadget designed to hold a phone. It's stretchy and fits around my wrist, with a zipper at the top. I know I’m not the only rider facing this problem, and there may well be other, better solutions. But — sorry, Frank Sinatra — “I’ll Do It My Way.”
Joan Fry is a lifelong horse lover and the author of “Backyard Horsekeeping: The Only Guide You’ll Ever Need” (The Lyons Press, Revised Edition, 2007). She can be reached via email at joan@joanfry.com.
This article originally appeared on The Pueblo Chieftain: Hoof Beats: Key Keeper
