Dog Trick - Closing Eyes

[cheagle]

I'm wanting to teach my boy to close his eyes when he plays dead and am wondering if anyone has taught this?

It's easy to get him to blink but I'm wondering if It may be better to sit with him and capture it when he closes his eyes in a relaxed way?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Jigsaw]

My dog will do a slow blink. :D It's usually when she's pretty relaxed and I blink at her and she starts doing it back. But I did capture and mark it to get the behaviour. I don't have a verbal cue just my blinking! May take awhile for the dog to understand what you want but keep trying! You could use your hand over the eyes to have dog reflexively shut them and mark that.

[LilBailey]

Wow sounds interesting would love to know how this turns out. I have read about teaching blink to help a dog relax but not sure how to do it.

[cheagle]

Hi. Thanks for your insight. I found the blinking was pretty easy. I blink, he blinks, click & treat. So far I've done 2 sessions of relaxed closed eyes and he had no idea what I want. I think this may take a while. LOL. I'll let you know how we go...

[corvus]

This is just me, but I think I'd try putting blink on verbal cue just on the hunch that it might be easier for the dog to grasp duration with a behaviour that is cued with the same kind of signal as other duration behaviours. I haven't done anything like closing eyes, but I'm currently teaching my dogs to take a breath on cue. Sometimes holding out after a short breath can get you a longer breath. Same with targeting. Once your dog knows what they are being asked, if you hold off rewarding they will often do it again harder or do several in quick succession like the way we hit buttons repeatedly and harder if they didn't work the first time. If a dog can blink harder or several times quickly you might get a smidgeon of duration to work with.