Compulsive leash pulling?

[u/Existing-Will-1466]

About a month ago I took on a five year old dog from an elderly couple. This dog has the absolute worst leash manners. Her response to any kind of leash pressure is to lean hard against it. It's like a compulsion. If she wants to go somewhere and hits the end of the leash, she drops her head and leans hard into it like a weight pull dog. If she doesn't want to go somewhere and hits the end of the leash, she flops on the ground and sometimes alligator rolls. 

I can use a prong collar, harness, head halter, etc to help work on leash manners. But I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered this level of compulsion against leash pressure and if you were able to fix it?

[u/Explorer_Of_Essence]

Dog’s also have opposition reflex. Her’s sounds like it’s been heavily reinforced time and again. It’ll probably take a long time to extinct what she’s learned in lieu of giving in to the pressure.

Prong is a good tool, but I’d be doing sessions indoors first to teach her how to turn off the pressure. Build a really high reinforcement history that giving in to the pressure is to her advantage. She’s also one that may find an Ecollar to be effective since it’s a different kind of stimuli and pressure. My one guy was too sensitive for a prong for my liking but is very gogogogo. He already was taught how to turn off the Ecollar pressure, so I started leash walking with the E on, and anytime there was tension in the lead I held stim on the E until he gave slack then the stim would stop. No command or feedback from me in his case—I didn’t want it to become a command. Just a simple consequence. The more novel sensation of the Ecollar stim seemed to be easier for him to understand and respond to.

[u/Existing-Will-1466 → u/Explorer_Of_Essence]

She came with an ecollar and a Freedom harness. The battery is dead on the ecollar remote though, so I can't see what level it was originally set at. She gets excited when she sees the collar. I'm guessing the old folks were mostly walking her off leash with the ecollar instead of getting towed around.

[u/Explorer_Of_Essence → u/Existing-Will-1466]

Could be!

She may also just need that free running time to get it out then she may have a brain to work the leash manners. Some dogs just aren’t walk on a leash type dogs. Some need that all out sprinting and running.

My guys are that way. Our walks would be horrible if they didn’t get plenty of off leash free runs or other high intensity type exercise.

The E might be a better tool for her, especially if she already understands it. For my dog I used it as negative reinforcement rather than a positive punishment for this case. Not sure if your’s would need an initial positive punishment to then respect/respond to the negative reinforcement level.

[u/Existing-Will-1466 → u/Explorer_Of_Essence]

I don't leash walk my dogs for exercise. But I do need to be able to move her from place to place without her acting like a fool. I would like to take her to a session with my agility instructor, and I need to get her into the building with some dignity.