When you need attention from your dog you can use it’s name, or a cue like ‘look’ to get them to look at you. We will use a process called shaping to teach the dog to look in the direction of our eyes. Make sure you have something the dog wants and you’re not in a stimulating or distracting environment so you can have the best success. Later, distractions can be gradually added so that your dog can perform even in real life scenarios. Remember it is not in a dog’s natural character to want to make direct eye contact for extended periods of time—in dog language that is disrespectful. We can teach them to overcome this notion by practicing rewarding them for short eye contact and then gradually lengthening the time. Another thing to keep in mind is that dogs have great peripheral vision and they may be looking at you but not directly at your eyes. If you would like to refine attention from your dog, teaching ’look’ is often helpful.
Using a treat or a toy, draw a line from the dog’s nose to your eye level. If the dog looks at the treat or toy quickly say ‘good look’ and give it to them. You can pet and praise them as well if you’d like. If your dog looks away, just redraw the line without saying anything. After you’ve said ‘good look’ a few times you can move on to the next step.
Say ‘look’ and then draw the line to your eyes. If they look, say ‘good look’ if not, just redraw the line until they do. Once they are consistently looking at the treat or toy you can start shaping. Act like you have a treat in your hand but instead have it in your opposite one. Say ‘look’ and draw the line with your empty hand to your eye level, when they look say ‘good look’ and quickly give them the treat with the hand that hid the treat. Now they’re not looking at the food and they’re looking at you. Practice adding time a couple seconds at a time until you’re satisfied.
