I need some advice please.

We have a 15wk male GSD who is wonderful.  We also have a 4 year old energetic boy.  They love each other and are bestest pals.

GSD loves his walks now (used to be very wary when out and about and would stop if he saw other people etc, we have battled through this and he tends to ignore other people and walks beside us beautifully). 

The problem we seems to have at the moment is walking together as a family without the over excitemonet of both dog & boy.  When OH or I walk GSD alone he walks wonderfully.  But when we all go out together as a family GSD gets all silly and over excited.  He'll pull to walk beside our son and if we go too far from him he'll pine for him etc.  We've tried to keep him beside our son but as 4 year old boys are are he gets all over-excited and this makes the dog worse which in turn make the boy worse (can you see where this goes lol!)  We thought could it possibly that he feels he needs to walk by our son so he can protect him (as when people come up to us he can sometimes bark - in a protective manner.  This doesn't happen all the time just the odd occasion - this isn't the main problem as we can calm/quieten him down and then he's fine)

We want to make the walks a nice family event, I know they both will most probably grow out of this, but was wondering if any of you had any advice what has worked for you.

Hopefully I have explained myself well enough.  Feel free to ask any other questions for background.

hi there i had exactly the same problem with my GSD when he was 13 weeks old he developed a strong bond with my little girl and it was so strong that if we went for a walk and my little girl dissapeared from site he went bannans. also if peopel approached my little girl he barked in a protective manner.

it got to a stage where he was so protective he started to threten my little girls dad everytime he wanted to do somethign with my little girl andf one day he nipped him.

my advice to you is to try and calm this bond down and to tey and take the dog fro walks with out your olittle boy. and try and stop your dog being so protective. as he is goign to be a big strong boy when he is older and if he decided he dosnt want you to go near your little boy one day. there could be problems.

You have a German Shepherd, the latter part of his title tells you what he was bred for, shepherding.

GSDs like all their "flock" to be together and are not happy if you are not all in the same place.

Hi there

When my children were younger we would attach the dogs usual lead (which i kept hold of!! and used to control the dog) ), and then also attach a spare lead for my daughter to hold, and made a big deal out of how she was walking the dog, which made her feel grown up and responsible (and so less likely to run ahead).
When you get to the park, or where ever you're going, and you're son wants to go and play, try and distract you're puppy with a favourite toy/and or treats, keeping his attenetion on you , not you're son, if he starts to whine and pull towards you're son, if he already knows sit, use this to stop the pulling and as soon he's quite and sitting nicely, reward him/treat......worked for us...hope this helps.

Nik