My sixteen-month-old golden retriever occasionally suddenly stops and refuses to walk; instead, he will want to turn around and head back home.
At times, it happens as soon as we start walking; at other times, it happens when I decide to go in a direction he doesn’t want to go.
No treatment or reward will make him move when he doesn’t want to.
Are there any tricks I can use to get him to keep walking?
I dealt with this issue with a lot of the dogs I used to walk—some were old, some were lazy, and others just didn’t like the weather. Sometimes, I’d have to pick the dog up and carry it a bit away from the house, then put it down so we could walk back toward the house (since that’s the only direction they seemed interested in ).
Other times, I’d trick the dog by pretending I saw something exciting up ahead. I’d start running, and the dog would get hyped up and run with me for a bit.
Walking a few dogs in a group sometimes worked too, as the reluctant one would feel compelled to join in, though this isn’t a good idea if the dog is old and achy.
Overall, it was a frustrating problem as a dog walker, and it’s one of the reasons I think some dogs just don’t need a mid-day walk.
Yeah, there was this really old, tired dog with super smelly breath, and sometimes I’d just let him sniff the same small patch of grass while I chatted with a neighbor. On really hot days, we’d go out for a quick pee, then head back inside to watch TV in the air-conditioned apartment (at the owner’s request).
I even had to carry this dog up and down the stairs because of his achy joints, but even that seemed to cause him pain. Honestly, I don’t think he should’ve been getting extra walks at all. When I heard he passed away, I felt so guilty for forcing him on walks he clearly didn’t want to take 
Oh my, I definitely feel that! I used to “walk,” or let an old Golden outside the door and then go back inside, with him. I would sit in the living room and pet their dog while the dad, who worked from home before Covid, had business calls in the adjacent room. The mother said, “Oh we know he won’t walk, we just like him to have a friend,” when I bumped into her once.
Take a stroll with a companion as an experiment. Give the other person the leash when the dog stops, then carry on down the road. The other person stays still until you are sufficiently distance away from them, roughly half a block to a block, at which point, ideally, the dog will want to catch up with you and start walking again.
Is he perhaps weary or injured? In addition to being obstinate when out on walks, my dog has bone cancer. Although it’s probably not the case with yours, it’s a good idea to be sure.
Yes. Four years and five months old, my dog began to simply stop midway through our walks and want to go home a few months ago. It was just discovered that he has stage 5 lymphoma. Not sure if this is relevant, but based on all of the responses, it seems frequent.