When it comes to training a dog it is very important that your dog makes eye contact with you. Just like humans you know when someone is paying attention to what you are trying to say, by making eye contact with you, this is the same when it comes to dogs. If your dog is not looking at you when you are speaking to him/her then chances are good that they are not listening to you. This is important when training a dog you want something that tells you that the dog is truly listening to what you are trying to teach them.


Here is something that you can do to insure that your dog is making good eye contact with you and is ready to begin training.

First try and point to your eye and say watch me, if the dog does not even turn their head to look at you then you might want to try and reward them for this. Get a small treat that your dog likes and hold it between your thumb and index finger and draw a line for the dog’s nose up to your eyes and say watch me. Chance is good that the dog will look in the direction of the treat. Keep repeating this and even try and hold the treat up there for 10 seconds and then go longer because the longer the dog looks at you the better chance you have of holding their attention. Once it seems that the dog is getting the idea that when you say “watch me,” means to look at you, you can lose the treats and they will still focus on you because they know there will be a reward when they do.

The best thing that you can do for yourself while training is a dog is to be able to get their attention and hold it for long periods of time, this will keep your dog from wondering off and going into their own little world which can make it very hard for them to train.

Whoever thinks that a Jack Russell is not smart, they are wrong. My mom tried telling me that she did not think that Max was smart because he has some pink on the roof of his mouth. I laughed because she is always trying to compete with me, by saying that he dog is smarter. Max does some things that sometimes make him look as though he is not a smart dog like tearing up the trash or my shoes, but that is not a dumb dog it is a typical Jack Russell when they are bored and there are only a few things left for them to do.


He looks at me and cocks his head when I am talking to me and he also makes great eye contact and so I know he knows what I am saying to him and he is listening. Today though it was a funny moment of a dog trying to push his limits in the house but in at the same time use his intelligence. My husband and I do not let Max go into the bathroom because every time he is in there he tends to rip the toilet paper to shreds, and so we have taught him to sit outside the door and wait and he does a great job with this. Sometimes he will even take a nap by the door when I am in the bathtub. We today I was taking a bath and Max brought his fake duck dog toy and lay down. I told him to sit and wait, he did this and because I was taking a bath about 5 minutes into it he laid down. Then all of a sudden he kind of nudged the duck inside the doorway, but not so much that he could not reach it from where he was laying at. I just thought that he was done playing with it and he just did not want it anymore, then he pushed it a little farther in the doorway and moved towards it, this did not really mean to much to me at that moment and so I just let it be, but before I knew it he was nudging it all the way into the bathroom and then I figured out what he was doing. He thought that if he kept pushing the duck into the bathroom that I would not be upset with him for coming in to get it.

Needless to say Max outwitted me for a few seconds today