I read through some of the previous messages leash walking
problems, but none seemed to fit my situation exactly.

I just adopted a one year old, sixty pound shepherd/rott mix. He is a
sweetheart and is so well behaved normally. He sits, stays, drops-it,
lays down, sleeps in his crate, is housetrained, and stays out of our
upstairs bedrooms. He does really well at the off-leash dog parks and
gets along with both people and dogs.

However, when we put his leash on him, he turns into a monster.
Actually, he's okay until he sees people or other dogs. He pulls
really hard and starts growling/barking. I can tell that he doesn't
actually want to hurt the people or dogs at all. In the few times
that he managed to reach a person or dog, he only rubbed up against
them, wagged his tail and said hello. All the growling and barking
stopped. Of course, it is very scary for strangers when they see this
dog growling and pulling, and the last thing they want is for him to
go over to them. It seems like the more restrictive I am with him,
the wilder he gets.

I know that we are using the wrong leash and collar. Right now we
have one of those flexi leashes and regular buckle collars. His
foster told me that she had tried a choke collar and a six foot leash
under the supervision of a dog trainer that came to her home, but that
did not work. The foster's solution was to give up teaching him any
leash skills at all.

We're signed up to take an obedience class, but it doesn't start for
two weeks.

I am primarily writing to see if anyone has had a similar experience
with a non-aggressive and normally obedient dog acting like a monster
on the leash. I just don't understand why he would turn into such a
different dog. I read about leash aggression and barrier-frustration,
but that doesn't seem to fit his case so much since he does fine in
his crate and is not an aggressive dog at all.

Thanks for any insight.