Pack Goat Training: Day One

Always in a quest to make animals more useful, we are endeavoring to make our goats "pack-goats".
How is this useful? I am so glad you asked...here's the story....

So, throughout the year (the winter especially) the Wife is looking for ways to keep the Farmboy Trio busy in positive and character-building pursuits.  A lazy boy is eventually a naughty boy.  That's the Wife's theory. In the quest to make animals constantly useful, and mixed with the need to engage three little Farmboys, the Wife found an article on "Pack Goats".  Does anyone else remember the picture of the goat with the straw hat and sweet little backpack on his back from Richard Scarry books?  Goats pulling carts of children and fencing supplies, children taking goats on adventures with packs full of supplies, Dear Farmer getting his lunch delivered to him via "pack-goat". That was exactly what the Wife thought of!  Add to that the picturesque thought of a brother leading his goat which is pulling a cart with his sister in it(both children clean and smiling faces) and you have a Wife on a mission!!!
"Dear Farmer, we must train our goats!", declared the Wife, and off she went in search of training material.  Dear Farmer, I think, mumbled something that was probably an "okay" and rolled over to go back to sleep...because it was probably very late at night and as soon as the sun goes down, so does Dear Farmer. Anyways, the Wife has been reading blogs and watching youtube videos like mad to learn how to teach the Farmboy Trio to train the goats.

Well, today was the first day of training.  It started to rain at about 9am, and it hasn't stopped since.  But neither rain nor lack of time was to dissuade the Wife from setting out with four children (Farmboy Trio and also WhizBang!Farmer's Daughter) for goat-training day number one.
The Keeper of the Flame has decided to work with "Garlic", a brown Billy Goat.
The Pied Piper is working with "Pepper", a black and white Billy Goat.
The WhizBang!Farmer's Daughter is working with "Paprika", a dark-brown doeling.
The Little Farmhand(Dear Farmer's Shadow) was working with "Cumin", a light brown doeling.

Step one: Entice the goat to always be your friend by feeding them a peanut.
This was very easy.  Everyone got this one, no problem.

Step two:Put collar and leash on goat.
The Billy Goats got a little concerned during this process, the doelings didn't notice what we were doing, they were looking for where we had pulled the peanuts out from.

Step three: Take the goats on a long walk.  This will build up endurance.  Make sure you tell them where to go, not them telling you where to go.
And here's where the rubber met the road.  In the rain there were children walking, running, laughing and grunting.  Goats were pulling and tugging, nibbling and nudging, jumping and bucking.  It must have been quite a sight for the cars driving by.  Rain and cold with children and goats all over the place in the mud and fields.  It was the Little Farmhand that couldn't get "Cumin" to cooperate.  Plead with her as he did, she was more interested in getting out of the rain than playing with the little boy.  He was crushed.  We told him that we would do it again on a day when it's not raining, maybe she will be better.  But in the end, the only thing that made life any better was sitting by the woodstove and reading a book with the Wife.

Well, day one went well. We'll consider it a success, if for no other reason, because the humans got out there and did something productive. The goats didn't lay around the hay barn all day just getting fat, they were expected to get out there an do something as well.  Everybody ready for day two???