Have you ever met a dog who gets uncomfortable when you look at it for longer than a second or two? Especially when you make eye contact? Some dogs start to tap their tail slowly, show the whites of their eyes, and lay their ears back in a submissive looking gesture, all together meaning “I’m uncomfortable with what is happening”. Other dogs look confused and simply walk away. Still others get nippy out of a playful attempt to move the interaction along, while others might even growl. But most dogs that I know simply lick the person’s face. With all these various responses, eye contact with dogs and looking at them in general, can get a bit complicated prompting many people to ask, “Is it bad to make eye contact with my dog?” To answer this question, one must first take a look at the difference between dogs and people when it comes to eye contact.
Eye Contact – People Verses Dogs
Domestic dogs seem to offer eye contact regularly. As a trainer, this is a behavior I capture and train dogs to do on cue. It is a great tool to use for training other behaviors and for teaching your dog to pay attention to you. In addition to that, it is also a great skill to practice that seems to help develop the human-dog bond. However, dogs looking into our eyes on a regular basis, does not mean that they want to make long drawn-out eye contact. In an article found on the Michigan State University’s website, it is said that a human should hold eye contact for 4-5 seconds at a time and about 50% of the time when talking and 70% of the time when listening (Reference 1). However, for dogs it is said that “polite” eye contact should be held for only 1-2 seconds at a time (Reference 2). That is about half that of humans! While a dog can be trained to hold eye contact for longer than two seconds, a dog does not naturally hold eye contact for much longer a second, both with people and with other dogs.
Eye Contact in Dog culture
Interestingly, humans might be to blame for dogs making eye contact with their people at all. In dog culture, eye contact is something that seems to have developed as dogs learned to live with people. A study was done in 2016 on the differences between wolves, dingoes, and dogs on how long they would gaze into a human’s eyes. This study discussed that wolves do not hold eye contact with humans for very long at all. Domesticated dogs hold eye contact with humans for the longest amount of time, while dingoes are somewhere in between the two (Reference 3). The study seemed to suggest that this is evidence for dogs having developed this desire for eye contact during the domestication process.
Why Eye Contact Can Make Dogs Uncomfortable
While dogs do seek and hold eye contact with people much more than their wild cousins, they often get uncomfortable when eye contact comes into play between them and their owners for too long or in the wrong way. Why would this happen? There are probably many reasons, but in this article, I am going to cover two main reasons why dogs can be stressed out by eye contact with their humans.
First, it depends on the dog. Some dogs are more tolerant than other dogs. This means that they will not be as bothered by their owners staring into their eyes or looking at them for longer periods of time. However, that is not the case for every dog. This brings me to the second reason which is that people often use the wrong kind of eye contact with dogs. Staring is different than simply making eye contact or gazing into their eyes. People tend to stare rather than briefly gaze into their eyes (keep in mind that dogs tend to make eye contact for only a second or two, so something longer than 2 seconds would be considered staring to a dog). As mentioned previously, dogs do not often hold eye contact for very long. They will make eye contact (sometime frequently throughout the day) but then quickly look away. It is not necessarily the eye contact that makes them uncomfortable, but rather how long we humans tend to hold that eye contact.
What Does Extended Eye Contact Mean to a Dog?
In dog culture, from what I have seen and studied, holding eye contact is usually used for two main reasons. This first is to communicate some form of what people might call anxious displeasure. An example of this would be a dog whose owner is using a stern voice with it, so it looks at its owner out of the side of its eye (showing the whites of its eye) and holds that look while tapping its tail on the ground. The second reason is to move another human or animal. An example of this would be a border collie using its hard stare (appropriately called “eye”) to move sheep. Another example would be a dog who is possessive over a toy and telling another dog to back off. This second example is considered a threat and interestingly, dogs that tend to try herding other dogs using “eye” can start fights easer simply because their “eye” is misinterpreted as a threat. As you have probably noticed, none of these situations are good situations. So, while it is good that your dog seeks out eye contact frequently, and it is not a bad thing to make eye contact with your dog, dog’s do not naturally hold that eye contact for very long and if we try, they often become uncomfortable.
What’s in A Lick
So how do we tell if our eye contact is making our dogs uncomfortable? First, you can keep an eye out (no pun intended) for the behaviors I mentioned previously (whale eye and slow tail tapping) along with others such as cringing, darting eyes around the room, lowered head, and lip licking or yawning, among others. But the one thing I want to point out that people often misinterpret as having nothing to do with eye contact is licking faces. I have seen many dogs lick people’s faces for many reasons, but there is one type of lick that people often misunderstand which would be the tension breaker lick. Have you even been sitting on the couch next to your dog and your dog does something odd, so you look over and stare at it with a “What was that?” look on your face? Did your dog respond by looking back at you, maybe showing some whites of its eyes after a couple seconds, then lean over and start enthusiastically licking your face? That lick is your dog’s attempt at stopping this tense, uncomfortable moment. It is a very polite and cute behavior that dogs use to tell someone that they are making them uncomfortable. Dogs also do this to other dogs. Sometimes you will see one dog lick another dog’s face in what is called an “appeasement behavior”, essentially communicating that they would like to bring the tension level down.
Closing Thoughts
In short, making eye contact with your dog is not a bad thing, especially if you have trained a “look” cue that your dog knows means you will be holding eye contact for a couple seconds. However, it is also important to understand a couple things. First, understand that your dog knows the difference between a cue to look into your eyes and an everyday interaction. Just because we train our dogs to look into our eyes on cue does not mean they will like it when we have not cued them to do so. Second, not all dogs are as tolerant of eye contact. Just because your dog will gladly lick your face to stop uncomfortable eye contact definitely does not mean that other dogs are as tolerant as your own dog. We should never assume that a dog is okay with something, especially if we have just met that dog. As a result, when interacting with dogs, it is best to keep eye contact short, sweet, and paired with relaxed body language.
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