Look At Me

How to teach your dog to look at you and give you eye contact. This skill is excellent for helping to improve engagement! 

Take a treat in your hand, and place it between your middle finger and thumb, leaving your index finger free so you can point towards your eyes. With your dog in front of you, show them you have food, then slowly bring the food up towards your eyes, pointing at them (this will be our visual cue). Please be careful here if your dog is a jumper! Be sure not to get bopped in the face and also not to accidentally reward any unwanted jumping. 

When your dog looks at the treat when it’s near your eyes, mark and reward. Then when they are consistently looking up towards your face, you can start to remove the treat from your hand occasionally. Remember we are looking for 80% success before moving onto the next step. S if you do 10 reps, they need to succeed for at least 8 of the reps before you move to the next step. Remove the treat from your hand but still make the same motion pointing towards your eyes. Then on the next rep pop the treat back in your hand. If this is successful you can try a few with no treat in your hand. 

Once they are consistently looking to your face with no treat in your hand, start to introduce the verbal cue as you point. I like to use the work “look”, but I know some use “focus” and “eyes”, just make sure it’s a cue you’ll remember easily. As you point towards your eyes give the cue, then reward. 

Over time you can start to make your hand movement more and more subtle, until eventually you no longer need the visual cue and you only need to say your verbal cue for them to give you eye contact.