trying to learn custom functions / methods in jQuery

trying to learn custom functions / methods in jQuery

I have some code that initializes text when the user changes country and when the page load determines the country from W3C geocoding.  It works in Firefox and Chrome, but not IE, and Firebug says changeCountry is not a function.

    $('input[name=country]').change(function changeCountry(countryChangeCounter){
        countrySelected = $('input[name=country]:checked').val();  //sets country abbreviation
      //do stuff
    }).filter(':checked').trigger('change');  //at ready, fire a change on the selected country to update show,hide, etc.

After reading, it seems that one way to fix this is as follows, though I've not implemented the code:

      var changeCountry = function(countryChangeCounter){
      countrySelected = $('input[name=country]:checked').val();  //sets country abbreviation
      //do stuff
      };

      $('input[name=country]').change.click(changeCountry).filter(':checked').trigger('change');

Though I can't find anything like this, I'm wondering if a second way exists to create a custom method and end up with something that looks sort of like this:

      $('input[name=country]').change.changeCountry.filter(':checked').trigger('change');

In other words, can custom methods be used in jQuery, if so how, and how would such a method be triggered by user clicks?  Or maybe its possible, but not worth the effort and I should use the first approach.  I'm just getting started with this object stuff and need to understand better how it works.