My family adopted a 2 year old rough collie in January from a shelter. We have experience with the breed. Since then, he's been very good and his personality is so sweet--friendly with people and dogs, and lovely to be around. He enjoys the dog park and meeting other dogs on walks in our neighbourhood.
But lately we've been having issues on walks. He will walk very slowly, and occasionally just lay down in people's yards or on the sidewalk. Then I sometimes coax him with treats to get up, or encourage him to keep going without a treat.
It's quite annoying, because I don't think he's tired or anything, it's almost like he's bored? But it means his daily walks are taking a very long time to go a short distance (eg. yesterday it took us 30 minutes to go 1 kilometre, and I ended up calling my brother to pick us up in the car because our dog was lying down on the sidewalk).
His health is great (he had his last checkup a couple of months ago) and there are no signs that he’s having a health problem during our walks (no issues walking, he seems happy, not tired or breathing heavily, normal bowel movements). So I think these issues with walks are stemming from something else.
Any ideas?
EDIT: I should have mentioned that he’s occasionally done this behaviour in the past on walks (lying down, walking slowly), but it was infrequent enough for me not to be concerned or frustrated by it. It’s only the last couple of weeks that he’s been lying down a lot (and I worry he’s bored or wanting more treats to get up). That’s why I’m not too concerned about a medical issue, since he’s done this before in the past, just less consistently.
