To walk my dog this way?

[Frequency]

This is going to be long so apologies in advance but I need to clarify a few things because I know what MN is like and I don't want people reading things that are not there.

Firstly, I have 100% control of my dog at all times. It might not always look like I do, but I do. If I don't want to walk at a certain speed, we don't walk at that speed. We don't cross a road if I don't want to cross it. He is trained to come to my side and sit or lay down when told, however, I cannot get him to stop pulling so he is not trained to walk nicely at my side. If I stop and tell him to come sit he will come to my side but if we're walking and he's not wearing his head collar, he is pulling.

I've lost a lot of weight recently but have hit a plateau so I've been looking into ways to increase exercise and my fitness. I used to enjoy running but would feel too guilty going for a long run and leaving the dog at home and I don't think running in his head collar would be comfortable for him, so I considered cani-cross.

After lots of practice in our secure, enclosed garden, I have found a combination of leads and harnesses that allow him to pull or drag me but still give me total control.

We've now taken to the street with our jogging. We're not in full cani-cross mode yet, he is still learning left, right, and halt so I am controlling the speed, even though, to an onlooker, it appears as though I am being dragged along behind him. I can also instantly change the tension on his lead so I am leading him by the front clip and he can no longer pull.

Anyway... to get to the point I was focused on the pavement in front of us and what was coming towards us, not what was on the other side of the road so I did not notice a fellow dog walker come towards us on the other side before the dog did. He spotted them and tried to pull across the road at which point I stopped, changed the tension, and brought him to my opposite side. About half a second after we stopped my dog picked up a scent and lost interest in the other dog walker so I let him pick up speed again and we started jogging. All was fine, no drama but the other dog walker froze.

At first, it confused me. I completely accept that it looked as though we were out of control until I noticed him, but why stop and freeze? Then it occurred to me that he might have been frightened and didn't know what else to do. The last thing I want to do is scare people who just want a quiet stroll with or without their dogs, so now I am unsure if I am BU practicing cani-cross where there are other people, unfortunately, the other option I have is not to continue our training as I don't have access to any private spaces except the garden and even once we are fully trained and running it will still look like I cannot control my dog and being dragged along behind him to people who are not aware of the sport.

So AIBU to continue?

That's a gorgeous pup you have there OP!It doesn't look remotely scary and actually is not a large dog as I imagined from your descriptions.
I thought you had some giant sheepdog crossed with a sighthound darting around like a squirrel with 5 harnesses and 3 leashes.

You probably are overthinking this whole thing.
Separate your running from the dog. It's not going to work the way you are trying to do it and it's not great for the dog.
Carry on running on your own and enjoy it.

Separately, it feels as if you are overconfident as regards your dog's level of training. I might be wrong. I'd scale that right back and really try to assess how responsive he truly is. Every single time without fail? Make it interesting for the dog but be firm. Over and over.

Unless he is something with the temperament of an Afghan hound where recall is simply impossible to train, find out if you can improve the situation or find out what are the natural limits of your dog's recall.

Is he 2, 21/2 years old yet? Because that's the age where you may find a shift in personality either more settled or more challenging. At that point, you can only work with what you've got. Whereas at a younger stage, repetition does pay off in the long run.

Honestly I think even if your large dog only 'appears' to be out of control than it's a bit much to be running on the streets.
It would absolutely scare people and seems unfair .

He's 2 and a half. He does always respond to commands that have been "proofed" in the wild. To be completely fair to him, he has never run off in a forest either, and might not but I wouldn't risk it. He is a scenthoud and as soon as he picks up an interesting scent his attention wanes. I can get it back by raising my voice but I'm not 100% confident that would work if he smelled new wildlife and had the opportunity to ignore me. On the beach/open fields, his recall is 100%.

We had never tried pulling in the wild until yesterday. He knows left, right, stop, etc., when walking or jogging with me in the garden (on the harness) or an open field (off leash). I was, as it were, proofing the behavior in the wild.

On his head collar he knows to pay attention to me and pretty much ignores other dogs unless they pay attention to him.