Teaching Your Dog To Give You Eye Contact: Makes Life With Your Dog A Lot Easier

Teaching your dog to give you eye contact is a special training skill. Why should you bother? What are the benefits? Eye contact training is such a good deal! This small investment of time and effort will make everything you do with your dog easier!

Control

Immediately upon adding a dog to your family, you face the issue of how to keep the dog under control in critical situations so the furry one doesn't get hurt or killed. A leash can restrain the dog from running out in front of cars, but it puts pressure on the dog's body that causes a lot of miscommunication between dog and handler. It can even cause injury. Equipment such as the right collar, harness or halter for the dog at each stage of development and training will help. But training is what produces the finesse so that your dog works with you rather than just being restrained and pulled around by a leash. Eye contact is the fastest, easiest, and for many dogs the most humane way to develop training finesse.

Teaching Eye Contact

Stationary exercises do not work as well for developing eye contact as movement does. If you teach your dog to give attention to you when you say the dog's name, you can eventually develop the ability to get and hold your dog's attention anytime you wish. Expert trainer Linda O'Hare Newsome developed the following focused-attention exercise.

Have lots of tiny, tempting treats with you, but keep them out of sight. To initiate the attention sequence, say "[Dog's Name]!" and YOU MOVE ABRUPTLY away from the dog.

When the dog moves with you, PRAISE your dog. (This is where you will use a clicker if you choose that method, but verbal praise is great too.) Then instantly whip out a treat and give it to the dog. Do not show the treats until you are ready to give one. This prevents the treat from becoming, in the dog's mind, an actual part of the cue--or a bribe.

Each time you give a treat, align it between the dog's eyes and yours. You want eye contact with each treat. Soon you will find your dog seeking your eye contact! Always praise when your dog "checks in" by giving eye contact, and sometimes give a treat, too.

When you do this sequence, always do at least 3 to 5 in a row. That means that each time you:

1) say the name

2) move

3) praise

4) whip out a treat5) give the treat

This doesn't take much space, since you want it all to happen instantly. The movement is not over a great distance. You can move one direction the first time, back the other way the second time, etc. Always do at least 3 to 5 repetitions before you release the dog's attention. This is what teaches your dog to SUSTAIN attention on you until you release it.

Practice this exercise everywhere. You can eventually use a toy, but don't rush to get away from the food. Food is the easiest thing to deliver with split-second timing, and will greatly help in establishing the pattern of attention.

By always praising before you give the treat, you are building the value of your praise in the dog's mind. This will allow you later to praise at the correct instant, and deliver the treat a bit later (when you have to walk across the room to get one, for example), the praise will maintain continuity in the dog's mind between the dog's action and the reward.

The attention exercise is not extremely time-consuming. Just take a few moments and do it in every location where you go together. It's surprising how quickly it becomes habit for the dog to look at you when you say the dog's name--and for you to positively reinforce your dog's attention. People will comment on how much your dog loves you and on the obvious bond between the two of you--and they'll be right!

Other Methods

The idea is to be able to get your dog's eyes whenever you need to. There are surely a few dozen effective methods for teaching this, and a good training class you take with your dog will likely teach one of them. If you consistently make a behavior worthwhile for a dog and use good timing to teach that behavior, the dog will be highly motivated to learn.

For some things, eye contact from the dog is not desirable, and a handler might elect to teach it with a different word cue instead of the name. "Watch me" is a popular word cue for this. That way you can say the dog's name with a different word cue and the dog won't automatically look at you on hearing the name. This would be important if the task was to herd sheep, retrieve in the field or chase a bad guy-tasks where the dog needs eyes to be elsewhere. Guide dogs, too, need to use their eyes for their surroundings on behalf of their blind handlers.

One way to handle cues where you don't want the dog to look at you is to teach the dog to listen for those cues without hearing the name first. There are different ways of working with dogs. The point is to be consistent so your dog knows what you want.

Communication

With your dog conditioned to give you eye contact on cue, the communication between the two of you skyrockets. Handlers who maintain this training have dogs who learn not only to check in, but to read all kinds of nuances in the person's face. Dogs are experts at reading body language.

Remember, too, that eye contact is two-way communication. You can't expect your dog to give you eye contact unless you give the dog YOUR eye contact. So while the dog is learning to read your body language, you're learning to read the dog's body language, too. This skill is incredibly valuable to any dog handler, as well as being enormously satisfying. You and your dog will be "talking" to each other without words in ways you never imagined!

Instead of using a leash to restrain and guide your dog, you'll be able to use your eyes, your words, and your body movements. For example, you might use a leash to stop your dog from pulling toward a person and jumping on them or otherwise bothering them. With the control and communication you develop with your dog through eye contact, you can direct your dog to do something specific, perhaps sit and offer a paw to "shake hands." Developing the habit of eye contact keeps the dog ready to instantly pick up on your cues whenever you're working together.

Life with an Attentive Dog

A dog who has learned that making eye contact with you is rewarding will have a different reaction to eye contact than an untrained dog. You've probably been told never to look a dog in the eyes because the dog will perceive it as a threat. Obviously the dog who has learned that treats and other rewards come along with eye contact will have a changed belief about eye contact.

Still, in the process of working with a dog on this, you can take the "threat" out of your eye contact by blinking both eyes at the dog. If you spend time around cats, you'll see them do this with their eyes. Do it frequently at first, until the dog gets used to your eye contact. This eye signal can become a silent means of praising your dog with your eyes.

Your dog will learn to read your facial expressions, so use them to communicate. Your smile will mean a lot to your dog. It's the "tone of face" to match your tone of voice!

Develop other means of alerting your dog besides your voice. Dogs who live to a golden old age usually lose hearing, sometimes all their hearing. Develop communication through body signals and gentle touches to alert your dog to give you eye contact. Not only does this help with a deaf dog, but sometimes it's a great help to be able to cue your dog without making a sound.

Reward eye contact at every opportunity throughout your dog's life, whether you asked for it or the dog offered it unsolicited. Never take eye contact for granted. Make every time your dog looks at you be rewarding for the dog. If you'll do this, every other thing you ever want to do with your dog will be easier.