Sunday PUN-ishment: I'm screwed

Sunday morning I went to see Riley before going to my barn job -- it was time to change the gauze in the hospital plate. The gauze change takes some setup: sweeping the shavings from a portion of the stall, giving Riley hay, assembling the materials, etc. Once everything was in place, I picked up Riley's foot in one hand and unscrewed the hospital plate. Holding the screws between my fingers, I removed the old gauze and reached for the clean gauze.

Riley ruins the routine
Suddenly Riley jerked his foot, and instinctively I grabbed his foreleg with both hands. In doing this, one hospital plate screw flipped out of my hand, and out of the corner of my eye I saw it land fall outside of my swept area, back among the shavings.

DAMMIT! DAMMIT! There are only two screws holding the plate in place. I'm all too familiar with the "the want of a nail" proverb. When I first saw the plate I noted those itty bitty screws, and I'd asked New Bolton for a few extras. In the flurry of activity that day, I managed to leave the clinic without them.

I reattached the plate with one screw and wrapped it up with duct tape. For about an hour I sifted through the shavings, first with a pitchfork, and then with gloved hands. Riley "helped" by nosing me and stepping into the space I was working in. No. screw. anywhere. I searched until the barn workers came to clean his stall.

The situation

• I couldn't take the remaining screw to a store to find a match.
  
• I had to go to work at Harv's barn -- in fact I'm now 45 minutes late.
  
• Hardware stores are closed now, and would be closed by the time I'm done with barn work.
• The duct tape patch wasn't good for much more than a few hours.
  
• Bandaging over the glue-on shoe would add too much height, like wearing one platform shoe. Not really an option.
  

Bob to the rescue
I called Bob. Over and over and over. He was at the gym, but finally he called me back when I was at Harv's barn. I tried to describe the screw. He said, with confidence, "It's okay, I've seen the screw." He saw the screw once, almost a month ago. Good Lord, I thought. The male ego knows no boundaries.

An hour later Bob came to Harv's barn with a bag of 7-8 screws. We went together to Riley's barn. As he drove, I looked through the bag. None of the screws looked right. I fretted.

We went to Riley's stall, and I pulled off the duct tape (which was worn through anyway). Bob started handing me screws.

The third screw we tried fit perfectly.

Bob's cleverness knows no boundaries. We got home from dinner about 2 hours ago. It was my treat :-)