Problem when walking our Sheltie.

[charlie_pup]

Our Sheltie, Charlie (4&1/2 months old now) has come a long way in the past few weeks with his obedience and is enjoying his walks more. However, we are still experiencing a problem with him that we are not sure how to approach.

When we walk we run into a TON of dogs (our neighbourhood is full of them). Sometimes he will keep walking, we may do a quick sniff and greet if the other owner stops or sometimes we will by-pass them on the side of the road and keep going. However, sometimes if we are walking and he sees a dog in the distance (could be any size), he will sit down and slam his brakes on. Let me tell you-no amount of coaxing or gently pulling on the leash will get this dog to move until the other owner has either approached us or gone a different direction which takes forever it seems. The only way to get Charlie to move is to firmly pull on the collar and begin to walk. I do not want to "drag" Charlie by any means and this is why I am seeking any advice that anyone can offer. This habit of his is making walks very difficult and it gets sort of awkward when there's people watching. What can we do?!

As a side note, Charlie starts his level one obedience classes on June 11th .Until then, any insight is highly appreciated!

 

[Greenepony]

We ran into similar problems with anything "suspicious" when we first adopted Olive. We always carried high value treats (at that point, it was anything remotely considered edible but now I would probably use something smelly to really get her attention) and would bribe her, working towards not rewarding until the entire "exercise" was complete. Treat it like you're training for loose lead walking (I'm betting you'll cover this in your class as well) and a wooden spoon with peanut butter right in-front of the nose to distract him. Don't worry too much if he's still worried when your class starts. Even at the "advanced beginner" class we had some dogs at the beginning who couldn't handle passing other dogs (and we had 100% graduation at the end of the class, by some miracle.)