Usually I avoid jumping on the trendy bandwagon, but when Mountain Horse came out with their new line of boots last year…I had to have a pair. I have held off my judgement on the Mountain Horse Serengeti paddock boots for a while because my initial impression wasn’t great, but after a good year and several months I felt it was time to review these beauties.
These boots are beautiful. The leather is beautiful and soft, and I love the brass zipper. They go with so many things and have become my go-to boots when I need to look nice for work, but will still be around horses (photography shoots, visits to the race track, etc.). I have never ridden in these boots…I did not buy them for that purpose.
They are fairly comfortable for walking around and standing all day (8 hour photo shoots at Woodside), but I find that they give me blisters on the back of my Achilles from the reinforced back if I don’t wear padded enough socks (they’re well broken in at this point, and still cause this). Without that reinforcement, they would probably be my most comfortable boots…but they probably wouldn’t have held up nearly as well.
They clean up beautifully and I have not had any issues of quality at all. After a lot of use, they still look great even with heavy wear.
Note: When I got these boots the toe caps were not the same color. I was a little bothered by that because I have a little OCD. The distributor was kind enough to send some leather dressing to help even out the color – which also softened up the leather nicely and completely eliminated break in time. Even now over a year later with tons of wear and cleaning, the color difference is still noticeable to me. I doubt it’s noticeable for normal people though. I’m just a little crazy (I’ll admit it). They did offer to take the boots back, but I decided to keep them because they are still very attractive.
If you are looking for and attractive and hard wearing pair of equestrian lifestyle boots, I would suggest you give these a try. They really are quite lovely!