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Do Your Dogs Like Eye Contact?


*kirty*
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Mine are also reinforced through tricks and play from a young age, thus they are always seeking eye contact.

Em has worked out that those liquid brown eyes of hers are actually liquid GOLD....she has started staring other folk out at agility trials in particular when I'm just standing outside a ring. She will stare and drool whilst others are doing warm up tricks with their own dogs. It's hilarious because so many people fall for it and ask if they can give her a tidbit. She remembers who they are at the next trial and works them over again. It always makes me wonder...who's shaping who?

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Vinnie is all about it. He'll paw at you or actually turn your face with his paw if he's close enough.

He is clued in on body language too, if he likes a strnager he'll let out a little welp for them to look and wags tails. Otherwise he'll turn his head and trot away from the person.

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My GSD does, but my rescue BC has problems with eyes. She is a submissive dog who spent some time of the streets before spending 10 months at the RSPCA.

I did get into trouble with a dog's eyes in East Timor a few years ago. I was photographing street dogs and one didn't like the camera eye. These are dogs that went through the Indonesian times and I'm guessing didn't get treated well so they were a bit skittish and very wild-dog like. One dog started stalking me and exhibited classic domination behaviour. As I was looking through the camera at other dogs I didn't pick it up straight away. I swung around and caught his eyes in my lens and he had murder in them and had advanced quite closely. I calmly but quickly lowered the camera and my own eyes and backed up onto the bonnet of my car. Rolled over the bonnet and climbed through the door. He walked around so he could see me better and stared angrily at me before stamping off with stiff legs.

I think we teach our dogs to like eye contact but wild-dogs or domestic dogs with wild tendencies are different.

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Slightly off topic but an interesting fact - an experiment in Japan has shown that if you have a strong bond with your dog, when you gaze at your dog, your body produces oxycotin (hormone bonding drug). Here is a link to the article for those of you who are interested.

Edited by essentialdog
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Both my dogs like eye contact with members of the household but don't seem to do it much with anyone else. They're generally pretty disinterested in "non family" people anyway though.

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http://m.livescience.com/17763-dogs-communication-intent.html that's one. There was something about how puppies start looking at people's faces from a young age without being taught and that they track left of the face like we do. It was also found though that they did not mind upside faces or inverted (when looking at pictures of people and dogs they know) unlike humans.

It's just to hard to try find them on the tablet sorry!

Edited by Akayla
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No worries :) I heard it on a doco once... Secret Life of dogs or something. I thought it especially interesting about how even tiny untrained pups straight away look to our face for cues.

Today I saw something on fb about domestic dogs actually coming from a common ancestor of the wolf that is now extinct... off to Google and find out more about that :laugh:.

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Both my dogs (Elkhound and GR) actively seek eye contact. When my OH and I pet them, if we are not looking at them it's like they feel we are not paying enough attention. My elkhound in particular wants to maintain long eye contact. But they don't do this with strangers or casual friends.

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