couple of questions re my 6 (ish) month old dog

She probably still doesn't quite no her name yet. Is she obedience trained ie sitting...

Just seen this, there are some basic exercises you can do to teach the dog its name, and sit / stay / come.

Ground Rules:
Never hit / punish / get angry with your dog. it is a dog, not capable of complex thought process. If the dog doesn't do what you want it too, or something else entirely, just turn your back and don't reward the dog with your attention for being a "bad boy"

Training sessions are 10-15 minutes per / 5 hours, if you can't teach the command in that time, wait until the next session. A frustrated or bored dog won't want to learn, don't force it too.

Training is a slow process to build, and requires infinite patients, if you find yourself upset, angry or frustrated, just give yourself a time out, training will be alot more effective if both you and the dog treat it like a game the dog can win over and over.

1. Dogs name: Grab a handful of treats and sit on the floor with the dog, hold the treat in your left hand and get the dog focused on it, now say the dogs name and wait for it to look at you, the second it does, even if it's only a flick of an eye say "YES!!" and give the treat immediately. Rinse and repeat always waiting for the dog to look at you before treating it. - This will teach the dog its name means "look at me" and it's the preferred method of teaching the name.

2. Sit : with the dog in a standing position, hold a treat or toy 2 inches from its nose, in a diagonal direction move the - currency - treat / toy - from the nose -> above the eyes -> over the head. The goal here is to make the sitting position the natural place to keep his focus on the treat. As soon as his butt touches the floor "GOOD BOY!!!" treat him celeb for a few seconds 10-15. and repeat until his does it 3 times in a row, then add the word for a further 3 times in a row.

3. Stay: - with the dog sitting, stand on its right side, the dog's natural position is on the handlers left side typically. With your hand, cup some air, and from 10 inches away, push the cupped air into the dogs face slowly as not to startle the dog, stopping at 3 inches or 3 fingers away. This creates an imaginary wall the dog is behind, and won't pass until given permission. use a release word like "ok" or "yes".
You will need to build up stay time, aim for 5 seconds to start with, and work up 5 seconds a week until you have a 1 minute stay.

4. Come With the dog in a sit / stay, say the word stay, and slowly walk backwards one or two steps at a time, if the dog moves or follows you (and it will) just bring it back to the start position -without speaking or looking at it- and start over. Release the stay and say "come" when the dog is calmly at your side, treat it and repeat.

Let me know how your getting on in a week

I have a terrier and I have to tell you that I don't think it's possible to ever reliably train a terrier recall 100% - I've been working on it non stop for a year and a half and got best results from whistle training. 100% effective in the house, 95% effective in the garden and doing agility (she is inclined to wander off mid-course or decide she's just going to make up her own course now), 80% effective in the woods and fields, 0% effective anywhere else (ie. walking on the road, at the beach, park, etc). Close to home is the worst as she knows where she is where home is.

I've heard people say that you need to do 10 repetitions to 100 repetitions with the dog coming back successfully every time to consider it trained. It was into the thousands in my own house before I could confidently say her recall was 100% just in the house. Terriers are deliberately bred to basicly do what they want to a certain extent, they are very reactive to slight movements and have very high chase, catch and kill instincts so I don't fancy your chances with the flying leaves to be honest, they're clearly just begging to be hunted down

I have to agree with adrenalinjunkie. I have three terrier crosses and if they get the scent of something in the garden, they are determined to get to the bottom of it, even it means standing at the fence at the end of the garden and sniffing through the slats for ten minutes. Things must be investigated, don't you know!

Mine are very much led by their nose. Their noses are always twitching when outside, either up in the air or down on the ground. They can find treats hidden anywhere - unless they know I have a few in my pocket and then their attitude is why go looking for treats thrown around the garden where there are clearly some there for you to hand to us, silly human!
So I, for my peace of mind and because I walk them around the city, don't let them off the lead on walks. They get plenty of gallivanting around the garden. I just know in my heart and soul that if I were in a park somewhere with them off the lead, they would be gone and they'd get so excited, they wouldn't know how to get back.

We have one who was ridiculously bad for getting him to come back inside. If something outside took his attention and he got so focused on it, I could have thrown a whole chicken at him and he wouldn't bother with it. Indoors, we use the command 'bedtime' when I need them to settle down and go into a specific room and I started to use that command when I'd put them into the dog run in the garden. Now down the garden, I can tell them "bedtime" when it's time to come back in and all three will come up to me and in we go. It was not an overnight process, it took a lot of time and patience and a lot of treats to get them initially focused on me in the first place.

If she's a stray, she might be finding it hard to really trust people because of past experiences. My grandmother's dog was like that; she was a stray too. It took her a long time to warm up to being petted and once she did, she was real greedy about getting attention!
Give her time and be as cheerful about the whole thing as you can. If you're not stressed, she's not stressed and she'll figure out what you want. Right now, she could be just so delighted that she's in a safe place with people who care about her that she's only now getting to form her personality and at 5 months old, pups are very crazed and prone to getting sidetracked and only sometimes give a hoot about what you're telling them.

Best of luck and good for you for taking in the poor girl and giving her a chance at a better life!