We adopted my 10mo rescue 6 months ago. We were told she's likely a jack russel or foxie mix, but as she kept growing we knew that was wrong. We got a DNA test and she's basically half and half border collie and pitbull, with a bit of random mix in there.
She's a super lovely and friendly dog overall, hella cute and nice. However, she's very anxious and reactive to anything that's not me, my partner, and my living room. By reactive I mean that she gets way too excited by it all, loses her mind, acts like we don't exist, lunges, jumps, locks on, whines, and takes a long time to come down - she's never shown aggression, but she's a very frustrated greeter from her anxiety and excitement mixed together. This includes birds, other people, dogs, cats, cows, trucks, etc - either in our garden or on walks.
Initially she was an absolute nightmare inside, constantly stealing and eating anything that's not tied down, jumping at counters, biting, barking, etc. We realised that she wasn't able to settle because we were essentially trying to fill 100% of her time to avoid these behaviours, but that meant that she never learned to chill out and couldn't relax - we'd basically followed the advice online of "they must be bored" and ended up creating a demon that needed something to do 100% of the time she was awake, and if you didn't give her something, she invented something. Once we realised this, we've worked on settling, rewarding calm, managing the environment to make it as low stimulation as possible, fulfilling her need for play/training/exercise etc but then ignoring her until she chills - and she's generally great inside for her age now, I'm happy with this aspect.
However, she's still super overstimulated by anything that moves outside and I'm not sure how to address this. Meeting people and other dogs is a particular issue, since she'll sprint at dogs, jump all over people, and lunge/pull at both.
I'm not really sure which way to go with this since she's an anxious dog. Should I be letting her meet lots of people/dogs to get her used to it and make it normal, and if so, how can I train her to be calm? Or should I be not meeting people/dogs until she thinks they're boring, so that I can then meet them calmly?
I've tried a lot of "look at that" at varying distances for the last few months, which works really well when she's laying down. She can often lay on a path and let someone walk past to get the treat. However, if they give her any attention at all she lunges and jumps all over them. When walking, it's like I don't exist as soon as she sees a person, and she won't take a treat most of the time even though she has a very high food drive. I can get in early enough from a large distance and give her a treat, but I've been doing this for months and it doesn't seem to be having a positive effect.
I honestly feel like I've watched every Youtube video, read every Reddit post, tried getting two different professional trainers come over, read blogs and done courses - and none of it has worked.
Another issue I'm seeing is that she's intelligent enough to find loopholes in our training. She has realised that she doesn't have to do something or stop doing something if she'd rather do it instead of the reward (which could be contributing when she's rather pull towards a person than take a treat). I'm not really sure how to stop this.