The Breakaway Collar and Animal Crackers

Sophie visited, and I visited, and Bosco was so excited to go on walks, he’d run to the gate and baaa before we even got his outfit on. Wyatt would hide behind Carlie the horse and look around her butt at us when he thought we weren’t paying attention.

We tried what we could think of. Carrots cut up into tiny pieces. Grain. Other little yummies. Wyatt didn’t care about any of them. He just turned up his nose, flicked his big old tail, smiled at us, and trotted around the other side of Carlie again. Carlie couldn’t figure out why she didn’t just get all the treats Wyatt didn’t want.

Sophie brought a Breakaway Collar. She hoped if we could get it on him, that would be a first step, but if he wouldn’t let us close enough to get it off again it would be okay. Audrey taught us that collars and horned goats don’t mix. One can drag the other to death unintentionally. But with a breakaway collar, the collar will literally break before harming the goat. So let’s at least get it on him and try.

We tried for ten minutes per hour. Then we’d work with Bosco. Ten more minutes with Wyatt. The rest of the hour with Bosco.

Defeated, we put away the collar and sat on a log. Wyatt came a little closer and a little closer. He snuffled my hair.

“Hey there buddy,” I said. He snuffled Sophie. “Hey Wyatt. Well look here!”

He still didn’t let us really pet him, but maybe it was a start?

“Sometimes the shy ones you have to chase around are the best packers,” the famed Gloria Montero said when I talked to her about Wyatt. “They don’t want to be left behind, so once you load them up, they’ll follow you anywhere.”

She said try Animal Crackers and peanuts, or red licorice and smarties candies. We didn’t feel right giving candy to the goats, so we tried the animal crackers and peanuts and they were a dismal failure. None of the goats wanted them. Wyatt humored us by only eating the goat shaped ones but Bosco pursed his lips together and refused to look at me when I tried to give him a cracker.

I reached out to Audrey on Facebook. What does he like??? Grain, she said. Not ours, I thought. Maybe he’s homesick? Maybe she needs to come see him? What do we do?

While I was waiting for her response, Wyatt walked right up to me.

I slowly reached out my hand, and petted him for three solid minutes.