Dog Eye Contact and the “Look” Command: A Challenge and an Opportunity

It’s very important to work with your dog to accept eye contact. At a minimum, we want to make them comfortable making direct eye contact with people, to prevent misunderstandings and aggressive behavior. Taking that a step further, we want to teach them to actually seek out eye contact with us, their pack leaders. Eventually we want them to learn to look at us for directions and permission.

The “look” command is an invaluable piece of cross-species communication. By practicing it with your dog, you can prevent miscommunication with untrained humans and help your dog better understand you.

The Challenge with Dog Eye Contact

Direct eye contact is viewed as a threat in the canine body language. When two dogs greet, if one makes direct eye contact, ideally the second dog will look away as a sign of submission to avoid conflict. If the second dog does not look or turn away, there’s a good chance that a fight will occur.

This is quite often misunderstood by humans, and is the reason that children often get bit. They tend to stare at dogs, and don’t know to back off when the dog begins to give them warning signals.

Dogs that are properly greeting each other should avoid direct eye contact and sniff each other instead. This is how dogs learn about each other: what sex they are, if they’ve been spayed or neutered, whether they live with cats or other animals, and more.

Teaching the “Look” Command

Step 1: Guided Glances

Begin to teach your dog the “look” command by luring your dog to look at you using your hand, baited with a treat. Mark and reward your dog as soon as eye contact is made. If your dog is reluctant to make direct eye contact, break the exercise down into small achievable segments. At first, reward your dog for looking up, then for glances towards your face, then for making eye contact for one second, and so on.

Step 2: Reinforcement

The next step is to encourage your dog to voluntarily make eye contact with you. With your dog on leash, hold your baited hand down at your side or out from your body at shoulder level. Wait for your dog to make eye contact. Mark and reward. Ignore any attempts to get the treat out of your hand. Let your dog figure out that the way to the reward is by looking at you. The second they make eye contact, mark and reward. Remember to release your dog from eye contact, giving permission to look away.

Step 3: Undivided Attention

Next, begin to ignore quick glances and only reward the look that means, “You have my undivided attention.” Don’t be stingy with the treats. At first, you will be rewarding your dog every few seconds. Then gradually add more time between treat rewards while keeping the eye contact.

Step 4: Look on Command

Add your cue. You can start adding a verbal command when you have a solid 5-10 seconds’ worth of eye contact. You might also find it helpful to establish eye contact as part of other commands, like “heel” and “front.”

During this stage, eye contact becomes an anchor for your dog. Your dog learns that it’s calming to make eye contact, to anchor their emotions and lock their focus on you whenever they are confronted with a situation causing conflict or arousal. Remember that dogs are thinking about whatever they are looking at.

Step 5: Make it Mutual

Now that your dog has learned to pay attention and look at you, work on keeping your dog involved with you. We want them to learn that when we ask them to work, we expect them to ignore all other distractions. This can prove to be quite challenging.

We are asking our dogs for their undivided attention, no matter what. Make sure that you are extending the same courtesy to your dog. Don’t you become distracted with your cell phone, thinking about your afternoon appointments, thinking about your next meal, etc. Make the same commitment to involvement that you are asking from your dog.

Dealing with Distractions

Your dog is always going to be challenged with distraction. This is unavoidable. It’s OK for your dog to give a quick glance at the distraction, but not to say, “Oh… I really need to go check that out.” Here are some ways to begin to teach your dog to continue to pay attention to you:

• Don’t be too verbal or use leash corrections.
• Be patient. Wait for your dog’s attention. Stop waiting if your dog begins to react (barking, lunging).
• Carefully move toward your dog.
• Back away from the distraction until your dog turns and looks at you.
• Get between your dog and the distraction.
• Turn and walk away. Be careful not to jerk the leash. Continue moving until your dog attends to you.