How To Train a Dog to Focus and Maintain Eye Contact

You cannot train a dog that does not focus well on you. That is the reason why eye contact is a special training that you need to spend some time so that you can eventually make your dog obey the commands you give out to him. Focus and eye contact are therefore important training that you need to give him early on. If you are successful here, you can teach your dog other tricks which you yourself will be amazed that he is able to do. First, though, you need to use the clicker technique. If you do not have a clicker, your firm voice that says “good” or “yes” will do the trick. You may have to give other treats if your dog is not fond of food. It can be throwing him a tennis ball and then rewarding him by throwing the ball after he followed your instructions.

First off, your dog must be positioned right in front of you. You need to show him your treat that can be any kind of food that he particularly loves. Next you must position the treat in front of your face. When your dog now looks at your face, you need to firmly say “watch me” click and then treat. You need to practice this in perfect timing so that your dog also gets what you want to train him to do. So, this is what happens for the first few times.  You will click and reward the moment your dog looks at your eyes straight. That is your primary goal—that you are able to get his attention and make him look at your eyes.

Thus, if your dog does not look at you at all, there should not be any click or treat. When your dog progresses to looking at you every time, begin to delay the clicking and the treat by about a second. Then, you can lengthen this time of click and treat such that he is already looking at you eye to eye just so he will be able to get his treat. This is a neat and cool technique in making your dog obey you in other aspects of your training. You can now gradually stretch this time longer until you are able to get your dog to focus his attention on you. Then you can begin to vary this. As you are training him, if you notice that he is making direct eye contact with you even if you have no treat on hand, you can reward that gesture by immediately giving him the treat. In the same manner, if you are inside the house and you notice that he is focused on you, mark that immediately with a click and then treat him right then and there. Remember that the more you reward this behavior, the more it will be repeated.

Another way of reinforcing this eye contact is by holding a high-value treat at arm’s length. If he looks at you, immediately click and treat. You can begin to stretch this in situations when he is distracted like playing with another dog. You can call out to him the words, "Watch me," and when he looks at you, then click and treat.