You will see what feeds pulling day after day, and why a dog that pulls has not failed at learning: it has succeeded at learning something else.
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It has pulled since day one and you have tried everything. The problem may not sit in what you do during the walk, but in what happens right after.
A dog pulls, the dog moves forward. It pulls towards the tree, it reaches the tree. Every pull is followed by the result it was aiming for.
No method survives that mechanism if the mechanism keeps running alongside it. As long as pulling gets it there, pulling stays a sound strategy from the dog's point of view.
The reverse is easy to state and tedious to hold: a tight lead goes nowhere. That means slower walks for a while, and that is the real cost of the job.
When the tension never varies, it carries no information. The dog leans into it like a wall. It has no way of knowing when it is well placed, because the feeling is identical everywhere.
A lead that moves between slack and tight teaches something. A lead that is always hard only teaches pushing.
If pulling moves things forward with one person and stops the walk with another, the dog does not learn two rules. It learns that it depends, so it is worth a try.
The same happens with a single person, depending on whether they are in a hurry. Friday evening, running late, undoes the week.
Getting the whole household to agree on one thing beats three techniques half applied.
A dog that has been waiting for hours is at its peak the moment the lead appears. You are then asking for a calm walk from an animal that cannot give one.
What happens before the door counts as much as the street: the shoe ritual, the hallway jostling, the lead already tight on the landing.
Going out more often, even briefly, lowers the starting level. That is a change of routine, not an exercise.
A jerk, a sharp word, a telling off: all of that says what not to do. None of it points to the position you want.
A dog does not deduce walk beside my leg from the message not over there. It tries something else, often at random, and gets told off again.
Saying what you want costs less than correcting what you do not: a dog that knows the spot near your leg pays off will drift back to it on its own.
A well designed harness can make walks bearable and spread pressure across the body rather than the throat. That is a real gain and not to be dismissed.
But kit that makes pulling less effective does not replace learning. Take it off and you have the dog you had before.
So the useful question is not which model to buy, but what do I want it to learn while this kit is making walks liveable for me.