Eye Contact

How To establish Good eye Contact
Sit on the floor and have a fistful of treats in your closed fist. Hold your fist out in front of you, say nothing (the hardest part!) they will try lots of different behaviours to get to the treats. What you have to do is wait until you get the behaviour you want. Keep your eyes fixed on your dog’s face then the second they glance up at you say, good and give them a treat from your hand. Don’t push it, if they only glance at your chest/upper torso then say good and treat, as with all training to get what we want can take patience. As the repetitions continue, we can raise the criteria moving from a torso glance to eye contact.
Let the dog finish each treat then move your fist to your front and repeat.
We need three rules for this and in fact for all dog training.

Motivation – Is your dog motivated for the treats? If not, then get better treats or train in a less distracting location. Better treats usually does the trick! Patience – take your time this is not a race. You are building for the future and years of a happy balanced. Patience!! Timing – for your dog to realise what behaviour pays then your timing must be perfect! Yes, we are training you too!! Say Good the second your dog looks at you then deliver the treat. Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat Now you have mastered the eye contact then the next step is to add duration Repeat the above steps until your dog is a eye contact master then we need to add duration, so now we are going to wait a couple of seconds (no more) before we treat.Repeat ,repeat ,repeat. Over time you can now ‘do’ a longer duration however throw in a second wait every now and then so your dog never quite knows when the treat is coming. Think payouts from a fruit machine rather than a vending machine!! Now we can move onto different locations and positions, standing up, in the kitchen, garden etc…. Remember practise does not make perfect, Perfect practise makes perfect. Always keep the constant – dogs looks at you – good – Treat. This will ensure that no matter what is going on around you it doesn’t matter, you have a rock-solid eye contact with your dog.