2 months ago we adopted a 1 year old German shepherd dog, Shadow, and it was quickly apparent that he has been poorly socialised, and was an extreme lead puller. We are guessing that as a result he was not walked regularly. We also have a 7 year old German Shepherd, and they seem to have settled well in the house together after a few minor altercations in the first few days. We have separated them for walking as it was impossible to get Shadow's attention, and our older dog became more reactive to strange dogs with him around. With a lot of hard work and consistency Shadow is now walking well on the lead, however when we walk somewhere new he is overstimulated and does not give his attention easily. He is also very reactive to seeing other dogs when out. We live in a residential area, and although we are trying to maintain dogs at a distance so that we can gradually reduce this and aim to meet nicely eventually, sometimes you meet dogs unexpectedly, or they approach when you are trying to reinforce a command with him, which results in barking and being led reluctantly away from the other dog. We use a dogmatic head collar, and when there are no distractions he has responded well to clicker training, however when distracted it seems to be impossible to break through his concentration. We already follow the alpha dog rules pretty consistently, but I will check again if we are missing something. Of course there is lots of emphasis on socialising puppies to avoid these issues, but how do we now go about trying to build on his socia
Isation to enable us to meet other dogs nicely? And of course some advise on when and how to start trying to walk the dogs together would also be helpful as we hadn't intended to need to walk separately as a permanent option.
