My keeshond Mio refuses to walk all of a sudden
TLDR; My 1,5 year old keeshond Mio has began to lay flat on the ground and refuse to walk, and I've tried anything. Only thing that works is releasing her from her harness and letting her walk freely.
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My 1,5 year old keeshond Mio has always had a behavior where she will lay flat on the ground to protest if she doesn't want to walk.
Usually this was at start of the walk, and generally only places where she walks a lot (like right outside of our house) which I assume she perceives as boring. However, this would only last for a couple of hundred meters before she starts walking normally again. And it was far from every walk, usually it started because we walked the same place again and again and was fixed simply by taking her somewhere more exciting.
But a couple of weeks ago this behavior has gotten significantly worse. It all started on one of our regular walks, when she suddenly shrieked, like a loud and short yelp, and became clearly distressed and started pulling homeward. She shrieked again a few times during the walk, and would pull as hard as she could trying to get home.
I have no idea what caused these shrieks, but she is a bit of a drama queen and will shriek at anything. Especially if something is stuck in her fur. She's done it before when sticks or snails or anything else is stuck.
I believe it might have been her harness that somehow pulled her fur or something, but I really do not know.
But now she refuses to walk. It doesn't matter where we go, or if I try to trick her with candy. The only thing that does work is if we take a forest walk and I release her from her harness and walk away from her, at which point she'll wait a little bit before running to me (or go out on the sides of the trail to explore the forest). This is obviously not ideal, as there are many situations where I need to leash her.
On our way home she always pulls as hard as she can.
My theory is that she dislikes the leash, perhaps the shrieks could have been from the harness pulling her fur or something, and it traumatized her.
She doesn't seem to be in pain. As I said, she will run around freely without her leash, and she pulls on the way home. She'll also run around at home. She's never limping or showing any signs that she's hurt.
Would love to hear any advice or similar experiences.