Hello, I adopted my first dog about 8 months ago. She's a husky/shepherd mix that spent the first year and a half of her life as a stray in the northwest territories. She's about 2 now, overall she's an amazing dog but I have been having some problems of late. She has a TON of energy, but she is perfectly calm and well behaved in the home, just lays around next to people and loves cuddles.
I moved to the city about 5 months ago and before that I was working in the forest and she would be allowed to run off leash all day wherever she pleased. Now where I live there is a forest (in the city) directly across the street with tons of walking trails. She gets about 40- 60 minutes of walks a day and often gets about 30 mins of playtime wrestling with the neighbours dog during the week and typically a full day of mountain biking or ski touring on the weekends, I feel this is a decent amount of exercise but far less than the 8 hours of running she was receiving daily for the first few months I had her. I was trying to combat this change in activity level by allowing her to run as she pleased during our forest walks. However when we go mountain biking she often sprints off into the forest and despite repeatedly calling her she would be too far gone and I would end up getting a call from someone saying she was at the car in the parking lot (its not a recall problem, her recalls very good, its simply by the time I realize she's gone into the forest she's too far away to hear me) so very recently I have been training her to heel during our forest walks and adding a bit of fetch at the end. However it seems like she needs to run free and that just walking beside me isn't enough exercise. Then as a result of this extra energy she plays too rough with other dogs she meets, especially puppies, and growls the whole time scaring other dog owners (she's not at all aggressive she's just very excited to play and plays quite rough) to add to all this its currently too snowy/icy to take her for bike rides or runs in the city.
So to summarize my overall question is how do I approach this from a training perspective? my end goals are for her to be satisfied with her exercise, play nice and not growl when playing with other dogs and to not get lost when doing off leash activities
Thanks for your time!
