I have a 5 month old pup, and yes I know he is still young. With that said I just want to hear if anyone else has my issue. On the leash he follows commands like a pro but once off the leash he acts if he has never heard the command.

What kind of dog? Some are slower than others. I have seen older dogs that were awful off of leash.

Get a check cord.

He is not yet ready, but the e-collar is a 1,000 yard leash, or check cord.

When Izzy was young, I had a 50 foot and 100 foot check cord. I do remember reeling her in once or twice.

Keep it on lead until you're able to collar condition it to the electric collar. You're dog is a soon to be teenager. It's pretty normal behavior.

Angie

Keep it simple when off the leash at first. Sit, stay, heel. When he follows those commands when off the leash, then progress to retrieves. You may even start with the leash attached to him, but not in your hand. Lots of praise. He'll pick it up. Good advice from others on check cord.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner;

A lot of times a pup will associate being off-lead with play time, so he thinks the "click" of removing the lead means he's free to do what he wants. When I get a pup that reacts this way, I focus on getting control over the off-lead heel, first. While walking with him at heel and on lead, quietly drop the lead and let him drag it. At some point, he'll realize it's dragging behind him. That's sort of a mixed signal, so he's not in a hurry to bolt, but he'll start inching for a wider berm. When he does, just step on the lead and let him 'run into' the correction. He'll figure out where he can and can't go pretty quickly and will be very attentive to what YOU are doing, which is a good attitude for the heel command.

After he's heeling well consistently while dragging the lead (with lots of praise for doing so), have him sit and practice a sit/stay. Once he has a solid heel and sit/stay dragging the lead, remove the lead. Command "heel" as you'd been doing and this time, let him heel with no lead.

If you were patient and waited for a consistent heel dragging the lead, he should heel just fine off lead now. Once he gets the idea that a command is a command on or off lead, you can then work on sit, sit/stay and recall. Here are a pup learning by this process. The videos are about a week apart - you can see his progress on both the heel and the sit/stay:

Thank you for those videos. They are extremely helpful to be able to watch someone else do it.