Freezing during walks - need advice

[brockmuir7]

I recently adopted a 2 year old female Greyhound about 5 weeks ago. For the first two weeks everything was fine. When I took her out for a walk she was completely fine. Did a solid 30 minute walk every day but after the two week mark, she started to freeze on her walks but would snap out of it after a couple of seconds and continue walking. But now she complete freezes and I could be waiting 10 minutes before she starts to move again. Nothing seems to make her freeze, no noise or anything moving. She just stops walking about 5 minutes into the walk. But she does respond to food being thrown in front of her and she will eat it and continuing walking for a couple of strides then stop again. I try not to do this too much as I don’t want her to think she will be rewarded to stop. But I do reward her when she starts walking or is walking. I just don’t get that she could be doing fine walking for 2 weeks and then start freezing on me the next week. I have even driven her to a new area and still does it . Could this be a case of overstimulation? Or is it stubbornness by her as I have also noticed that in addition to her freezing, every time we turn around and go back home on the same path she will as freeze as well. But that still doesn’t explain The freezing before hand. Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated to overcome this.

[newowner]

We've had ours for 12 weeks and she was fine for a few days then got worse and worse to the extent of refusing to go for walks at all. I think when she first arrived she went along in almost shock or maybe the habit of following humans with leads, then she decided that the traffic, the other dogs, the lawnmowers etc etc were too scary. When she totally wouldn't walk from the house we gave her a minute then asked her to come and pulled her by the harness to get her feet moving (not by the lead but sort of taking her body weight with her harness). Once she realised she had to walk she got much much better. That said we don't drag her around, it was literally a few times mainly to get her moving away from the house and get her feet moving when we knew she needed to get over some mental barrier. As much as possible we try to give her time to suss out the world and we haven't forced her to move in a long time barring the occasional time when she sees a cat and won't move on from it. She still does it out on walks and I've found a few things help - one is I act like yeah that's fine we are stopped ok I'm relaxed, go and stand next to her but not fuss her at all, then after a minute I'll go really cheery and matter of fact right lets go (to start with this was when a gentle harness nudge to get just one foot moving at least was used). Often walking across her head/shoulders sort of walking her in a circle worked for some reason, I think again because she felt the need to get out of the way and once her feet were moving she was ok.

The other thing I find really helpful once she's going is running with her - it seems to get her interest and prevent her from stopping. I don't mean a full run just to get her some momentum for 15 seconds then settle back down into a brisk walk.

Hopefully some more experienced people will help you but we haven't done a lot to address it and she has slowly been getting better (with definite setbacks e.g. the wind has got her spooked this week and she keeps stopping). I use treats to get her going too (sometimes) and it doesn't seem to have done much harm. It didn't work when she was really bad initially as she would just stop again straight away, but now if I have something great like chicken or cheese I give her one to get going, let her smell another then do some skipping and running and cheering her on like a crazy lady and it seems to get her a bit excited and focused on me, then I go back to walking with a bit of cheering on and give her the treat. Often that's enough to snap her out of it. Other times she just hears or sees something I don't and if I'm still near the house I just go back inside rather than push her - it's her walk so if she doesn't want to do it she doesn't have to (as long as it's not every time!!). If she's ignoring treats I think she is genuinely stressed and what I do depends on the situation but I don't push her too much. I don't think 5 weeks is time to start worrying too much, she is really still settling in even if all seems fine (our behaviour issues came in the first 10 days and then different issues after about 2 months as she started to test the boundaries and grow in confidence, made us realise that there's a lot of processing going on in their little heads even if they seem settled in and loving).