O'Boy's Bridle - Found!

Last week when I went through my tack trunk to find things to loan a teacher friend for Cowboy Week, I found something else that I had been looking for.

 O'Boy's bridle!

O'Boy was my father's pony that my grandfather bought on a whim from a passing circus in 1936. I've had his bridle for many years and it is falling apart. I wanted to bring it back into the house where it would be in a controlled climate rather than out at the barn in an unheated, non air conditioned tack room.

I also wanted to take a look at its bridle rosettes (sadly, there is only one). I am becoming interested in the history of bridle rosettes, especially since purchasing these from eBay.

I was thinking it might be nice to put them all together into a shadow box for display in my horse room, but after seeing how badly deteriorated O'Boy's bridle is, I am very leery of removing the rosette, at least until I have had a chance to look at the bridle and assess just how bad the damage is.

O'Boy shaking hands with my grandfather.

My father passed away almost ten years ago, and so I cannot ask him questions about O'Boy any more. And those I did ask him when he was alive did not receive much in the way of an answer as my father would reply that he did not remember too much as it had been so long ago.

But he sure smiled whenever he spoke about his dad's gift of O'Boy. All the more reason I want to see if I can stop the deterioration of this bridle and preserve it since it was such a happy memory for my father.