I got Waffle when he was 10 months old from a breeder who is fantastic in all aspects except for socialization. When I got him, I will admit I didn’t walk him very much. What I did instead was take him to the beach, take him to someone’s house, play with him in the house, take him into the backyard and play soccer, or play hide-and-seek, train him, teach him tricks, etc to keep him stimulated/exercised/exhausted. I take him hiking at least once a week for at least 4 miles, climbing rocks, crossing streams, navigating dangerous terrain, avoiding bears, etc. Obviously all of these activities are very stimulating and he has had little exposure to the leisurely neighborhood walk.

I’ve tried biking with him before but he hates it. He’s very capable of following my bike at a good speed for a good distance but he just doesn’t want to. The first time we biked, he ran a whole speedy mile with me before slowing down. His enthusiasm for the activity waned quickly. When we’re walking to the place where we bike—a high school track—he plants his feet in the ground and I have to practically drag him the whole way. Needless to say, we don’t bike anymore. I suppose running on a track isn’t very stimulating more than once.

Now, I wanted to get into walking him twice a day. When we get started on our walk, he plants his feet and keeps looking in the direction of our apartment—exactly what he did when he didn’t want to bike. I tell him to “come on” and tug on his leash a bit to get him moving forward, and he’ll go about 3m before planting his feet again and looking back. If I stand still and tell him to go where he wants, without fail, he will head back to our front door. Once we reach the halfway point of the walk, he is walking great—presumably because the latter half is more interesting and because he knows it’s shorter to keep going forward than it is to turn around. After 3-4 days of complete inactivity (I’ve been sick a lot) he is eager and even excited by the prospect of a walk, but the next day he is back to refusing.

He eats a whole prey model raw diet and has consistently for almost a year. He’s been to the vet to get his skeleton checked out and everything is great except for an extra chunky L7 and S vertebrae, which caused some limping after our most difficult hikes, but has been managed with diet/supplements and medication [Deramaxx 25 mg] which is administered only before very strenuous hikes. There is no reason for me or my vet to believe his mild condition causes pain on something as simple as a walk when everything else he does is orders of magnitude more intense and he performs without hesitation or signs of soreness afterward.

Is it possible he is just super bored with normal walks around the neighborhood to the point where he’d rather stay home? Does that happen? I think this is part of the issue, though not necessarily all of it.

He does have a fear issue with other dogs. He has NO confidence meeting new dogs and he reacts very fearfully to them, which is an issue I have been trying to address but may not be doing very well at. Whenever he sees a dog, I give him treats. This worked for a little, but now he is so focused on the other dog (often 10-20m in the distance) that he refuses to pay attention to me. I suppose I have accidentally been rewarding him for being dog-focused (instead of making the dog=good! association) and now I don’t know how to fix it. Would anxiety of seeing/meeting a dog cause him to want to avoid a walk? How can I reduce that anxiety since obviously what I’m doing isn’t working? It’s worth mentioning that his distaste for walks has persisted since before he grew so fearful about meeting new dogs. He was attacked by an off-leash pit a while ago which really escalated both his distaste of walking and his dog fear.