Trouble with dog walking

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We eventually did get a dog, we settled on a puppy 4 months old who is a ridgeback labrador cross, as far as anyone knows.
She was from an animal shelter, was a stray.

She's cute but although she was very quiet at the shelter she has turned out to be a headstrong dog and perhaps isn't a very good
match for me as an aspie but we are making the best of it, and I am doing what I can to be a good pack leader. Mostly it's going kind of okay but I do have some concerns about walking.

She was willing to pull on the lead until she choked herself which I find distressing, so I got one of those head halters for her, this
one is called Gentle Leader. It definitely works, she still pulls when she spazzes out (eg if traffic noise increases or a dog barks) but she can't pull as hard. I am diligent about not letting her walk ahead of me. ( If you are one of those people who likes their dog to be assertive and perky, we aren't going to see eye to eye so please don't flame me. This is going to be a medium/large dog and I am a non-athletic medium/small aspie woman)

My question is, what is the long term outlook? Will the head halter train her in any way or build good habits? Or am I missing out
on the opportunity, while she is young and the smallest she is ever going to be, of training her out of pulling?

I'm confident of getting some good answers, some of you really know your dogs

Mines a beagle, when I walk my dog for the most part shes curious of all the surroundings. She knows what I mean when I say "want to go for a walk? " and she'll tilt her head and get really happy. I'll take the lead, but sometimes she'll stand still and just sniff around for 20 seconds, and I'll lightly tug on the leash and say lets go .. and we'll go, and sometimes she might walk ahead but she still knows I'm the leader. I don't have any trouble with it .. the walk around the block is normally like 15- 20minutes tops and she's really good about it. I think yours will be fine and the head halter sounds like a good idea since your dogs going to be big. In that younger stage my dog was more unruly , she'd dig holes in the back yard and I remember 3 instances of continually covering them back up but she eventually learned and she stopped doing that. So .. dogs do learn , and grow with the owners too.

I have walked a literal ton of dogs in my life.

You should not use any kind of special reinforcement collar unless it is a very last resort. Using one of these collars without modifying the dog's behaviour just means the dog will find going on a walk to be extremely unpleasant.

Ideally, you should walk a dog with a lax leash. You need to train the dog to avoid straining at the leash.

This can be done by a few methods in tandem:

1. Walk the dog by walking a few paces at a time and stopping the moment the dog strains against the leash. The dog must get into the habit of stopping when you stop. Since studies show a time delay of a few seconds can render any reward or punishment meaningless to the dog, you must say "stop!" at the moment you stop. Don't worry about your size difference- what matters is not using brute force to stop the dog, but giving it a signal that it will meet resistance.

2. Praise the dog with treats and praise when it successfully goes a longer interval without you having to stop it. The dog will associate a calm interval with treats and praise.

3. Force the dog to pay attention to you. Make sudden changes in direction, alter your pace, stop and start randomly. Reward the dog when it responds by not straining, and be firm about halting at the moment of strain. You want the dog to modulate its pace to your own.

I'd suggest getting some books by Cesar Milan, or watching some of his shows. I recall that the Animal Planet has a series in which a woman visits people with misbehaving dogs and teaches the owners how to properly train them, this may help.

please listen to zerog. all dogs are wolves at heart. it's in their dna. you must be leader of the pack or you'll be second dog forever. scolding dogs usually is of no use. as z.g. sez, attention span of just a few seconds.

if you can't find cesar milan vids or books, lots of free training trips on web.

keep trying, please........and thank you for adopting from a shelter.