Walking w/ Rescue Dog
Hey all, first post here so I appreciate any feedback I’m able to get.
I rescued Sevro earlier this week but have been having difficulty walking with him. He is believed to be 1.5-2yr old lab mix of some kind, border collie possibly. The story from the shelter is they believe he was in a crate pretty much his whole life up until either being let go or getting out and being picked up as a stray. Zero training.
So far, he has been an amazing dog. We’ve had him 4 days and he already has got his name recognition, sit, lay down, paw, place, we are 50/50 on leave it and not jolting out the door. Walking is another story however. The first two he was pulling to the point of choking himself and wouldn’t let up. We got a prong collar, worked on some u-turns, but more so just to keep him from choking himself. He is more controllable now, but I’m not sure he even knows I am there with him when we are walking. When he is super persistent I will just stop and stand and wait for him to look at me which usually takes upwards of 5-minutes.
My thoughts are that he just needs to be exposed to everything for a while, that he is too overstimulated to recognize I am even out there with him. We have been doing ≈2hr walks in the woods in the mornings which I kind of let him do his thing safely, then an hour in the neighborhood where we are a little more strict on proper behavior. Would you recommend we spend the morning walks more so just letting him sniff and explore on a harness rather than a large exposure of walking through everything for 2 hours and just give him some time to experience things?
I have had really good training with my dogs in the past but I got them as puppies or already had some formal training, so any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!