I don’t want anyone to be jealous of my new shelter boots. But my summer pair have arrived, and they’re pretty fantastic. They’re fun to look at, fit perfectly, and are tall enough to serve their purpose but short enough for my feet to get a little breeze on an all too long and too warm Mississippi summer day. They’ve arrived just in time. We’ve been having a rather wet but cool spring. By now it should be at least 10 degrees warmer in the morning. But as a transplanted Yankee, I’ll take it for as long as I can. The humidity causes my brain to stop firing on all cylinders.

I got my first pair of shelter boots this past Christmas, after nearly a year of real volunteering. They are sturdy, insulated, and probably too nice to be shelter boots. Sometimes I feel guilty about wearing them to the shelter because they’re too expensive to be used as poop protectors. But then again, where else would I wear them?

When I started being a real volunteer, I wore running shoes on my first visits. And then I quickly figured out that I might want to wear a pair of shoes that I didn’t care so much about. Like an old pair of running shoes – the ones I wear while doing yardwork. So, I did that for a while. And that pair of shoes now lives permanently in the garage. They were impossible to keep clean after a couple of months of weekly visits to the shelter.

Shelter boots are serious. When you see someone at a shelter wearing them (if it’s not raining outside), you can assume this isn’t their first time. We have up to 250 dogs and 75 cats in the shelter on any given day. And while the kennel techs work hard to get everyone out and spaces cleaned every day, there is an inevitable amount of…elimination…to get through. And then of course, there are the yards and the walking paths – which also get cleaned regularly. But inevitably, into every shelter volunteer’s life, some poop will be stepped in.

Shelter boots don’t make it into my house. They get kicked off in the garage and then moved to the backyard to be hosed off and left to dry awaiting their next visit.

Shelter boots are also excellent for the purpose other people buy them for: rainy days. You’ve still got to get in and out of the shelter, and the rain equals muddy conditions on often walked paths. The only answer to all of this is shelter boots.

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