Will my dog ever get used to other animals and stop barking, pulling and lunging? She absolutely loves her walks but we have had to join the 6am / 9pm club and I am on high alert for other animals constantly.
In a nutshell, what's happening here is that your dog is scared of the other dogs, and is barking to make the scary thing go away. It's part of a pattern of behaviours - which are more common than many people talk about - known as being "reactive".
It's possible to make huge strides with this, but it's best to keep your expectations realistic - this is probably not a dog that's ever going to be running around the park playing with other dogs.
The way this is normally dealt with is to reprogramme the dog's emotional response. I'm going to massively oversimplify it, but in a nutshell the idea is to take the dog from understanding that 'dog = scary thing' to 'dog = yummy treat = not so scary after all'
You really do need a properly qualified behaviourist (not trainer - there's a big difference) to teach you this in practice. APBC and CCAB are the gold standard qualifications and you can find lists of their qualified people at
apbc.org.uk/find-an-apbc-member/
www.asab.org/ccab-register
In the meantime, keep her away from other dogs as much as possible. You may like to try using a secure dog walking field, which will allow her an off lead runaround without fear of other dogs intruding dogwalkingfields.com/
My own dog is reactive to motorbikes - he lunges and barks at them. This would be a non-issue if we lived in the countryside, but we live in the inner city, where you can't walk down the road without seeing several of them. Anyway, after a lot of hard work (blood, sweat, tears... literally) we've now got to the point where if one drives straight past us then he'll simply look at me and await a treat. If one stops in front of us (e.g. at a pedestrian crossing) then he's unlikely to cope with that and we'll walk away (down someone's garden path if necessary!) so that he can cope. He's never going to love motorbikes, but I've got him to the point where we can live with it!
She absolutely will not take treats outside so I am finding it very difficult to reward good behaviour except for vocally.
I'm afraid this is another sign of just how scared she is by the outside world right now. Very scared dogs just feel so nervous that they can't eat at all.
She's probably got a lot of cortisol (long term stress hormone) running through her at the moment. A lot of people will advocate taking a few days off walks - but doing lots of brain games at home to tire her out - to allow the stress hormones to deplete a bit.
What treats are you using by the way? For work on reactivity, you want some really high value treats - Primula cheese is often recommended, though I found that DDog loves Tubidog liver pate (each come in a tube for easy delivery!)
This is a good support group by the way www.facebook.com/groups/605603546664098
Anyway, long story short, progress can definitely be made, but you really need to see a properly qualified behaviourist.
She exhibits quite strong attachment issues whenever one of our family gets too far ahead or for instance if they go into a shop. She will lunge to follow and cry.
I think this is relatively normal - my own dog will do it too. This is a dog that will teach you to pick your battles - and this is not a battle I've ever considered worth the effort!