# Googly Eyes😐! How to break the staring habit



## reraven123 (Jul 21, 2017)

1. Move between him and the dog he is staring at.
2. Ask him to do something: whack your hand with his paw, turn in circles, weave between your legs, or puppy push ups--sit down sit down sit down or stand sit stand sit stand sit. 
3. Teach a solid "watch me" where he has to look at your face.


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## Happy'sDad (Jul 4, 2020)

It's difficult to break their concentration when they're fixated on something like other dogs, squirrels, foxes, whatever... I think reraven123 is really on to something with:


reraven123 said:


> 3. Teach a solid "watch me" where he has to look at your face.


I've conditioned Happy to "look at me" by asking her to do this countless times while on the grooming table. This command/request is usually good enough to briefly draw her attention from the undesirable element back to me. I'm sure it would be much more effective if I reenforced my command with treats.

BTW, Elroy is looking very dapper...


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## Phaz23 (May 31, 2020)

Poodles are notorious stare-ers similar to the way shepherds and collies stare. I practice LAT, offered durational engagement, and engage/disengage. There are plenty of YouTube videos and articles that explain each one better than I but the gist of it is going to a soot where your dog is interested but not fixated, and giving high value rewards and praise for when they look back at you on their own. Then you just rinse and repeat. In my experience, when I attached a cue to it too soon I got a weird behavior chain of fixating on the thing and then looking at me for a treat so I personally don’t suggest attaching a word until your dog is regularly looking back at you quickly.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I think there are two general strategies to try (and they aren't mutually exclusive). Overall I think it is highly desirable to avoid doing things that encourage any sort of arousal. One is to prevent the staring by blocking. The other is to make the staring way less rewarding than something else to do. In the long run the 2nd strategy is probably better.

To block staring by getting between two starer and the staree is not always going to work if your dog engages with a dog who stares back they are going to work very hard to continue the contest. Arousal will rise until one or both dogs become reactive. Blocking staring really needs true visual barriers with dogs in crates with covers over them. Since the dogs will still hear things nearby a fan as a white noise source can make this work better, but you do have to have a dog who can settle well in a crate. Javelin is good in a crate in a quiet environment but struggled at a noisy venue we were at on Friday night. My lessons: he needs more crate practice and I need a better cover to block all of his sneak peaks and we need the white noise of the fan. He will get better.

At the same trial where he had problems in his crate Friday night he did well ignoring nearby dogs by having other focus opportunities. I have taught Javelin to value being off duty on a mat (really a light weight beach towel). This is his beloved go to place and he has at least as much interest in being there to stare at however is with him as he does in almost anything else he knows. What isn't for him to love about it? I taught him to think it was the best place in the world by making eye contact between us and showering him with cookies while we stared at each other. As he figured this all out of course I decreased the rain of cookies (bits of cheese), but can give hm more cookies if there are lots of potential trouble spots. He really ignored a lot more crazy stuff while on the mat than in the crate. I paid him well for his success with his focus on me while staying on the mat.


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## Meisha (Sep 21, 2020)

What if the staring is at me? Just went out to pee and poop, has had exercise and play, has food in dish, just had a chew bone, cat has been located, has been petted and spoken to for an extended period. I just need some computer time and both hands to myself for a bit. But no, she just sits in front of me and stares.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

@Meisha you can teach the mat as a place to go when/if you don't want to crate or otherwise confine a dog using a barrier. It will take time to get Meisha to understand staying there while you are trying to work, but It should work and it won't matter if you are getting stared at.


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## that_poodle_noodle (Jul 24, 2020)

I have no advice to offer, but plenty of empathy! Here is a picture I took of Noodle when she decided I’d done enough work for the day and should come play with her now.










I’ve honestly never met a dog with a stare this intense before. Her eyes are like tiny laser beams 😂


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## For Want of Poodle (Feb 25, 2019)

When Annie was about 8 months old, I went to see a pro trainer who had an absurd number of titles on her dogs. She has border collies, so she knows a lot about dogs that stare and don't relax.

Bare with me, as I kind of think staring at dogs and staring at humans are related behaviours and are because the dog doesn't know how to relax.

It was in regards to seperation anxiety, but I complained that Annie DID NOT RELAX and was always vigilant, waiting for my next move. Staring at me, jumping up as soon as I moved. Trainer was like... Well, you can train her not to do that. Really?! How?!

As we chatted I had Annie on leash, and was to drop treats the moment I saw her show signs of relaxation (a version of the relaxation protocol). If she broke her down, I asked her to go back to the down exactly where she was. By the end of the hour I spent there, Annie was sprawled on her side with her head down, and I could walk around the room without her staring at me. We did some other things in between, but her default when not working was to relax. The trainer said that just like a human smiling makes us feel happier, a dog putting itself in a relaxed position (even if it just wants the reward) gets more relaxed.

I then started working on 'settle' by teaching Relax on A Mat, and getting her to understand that settle means to kick back and relax, legs out, head down preferably. I use settle a lot. 

In classes - Our rally classes have dogs in crates and I use a crate cover. Easy. I just have to manage her while we work with multiple people in the ring, so not for a full hour. I did have to manage her in her crate at first, as dogs get really close and she has had crate anxiety related to her seperation anxiety. I heavily rewarded any signs of relaxation in the crate at first.

Before rally, we took flyball/agility classes with no crate. I was taking the classes to get Annie to listen to me with other dogs running around, so used way more treats reinforcing good behaviour while waiting than I did for the actual things we were learning. I put Annie in a down, facing me, and asked her to settle. When she was really having issues, I tried to take a safe corner where we only had a dog on one side, and put me in between her and the dog. If she started to struggle, I would get up and start running through some tricks. Usually I could get her to relax on her side and even let me give her belly rubs by the end of the class. I tried to be alert enough to my dog to step in before she got too wound up to pay attention to me. Thankfully the agility/flyball club encouraged people to just walk out the door and go outside for a sniff break if their dog was having issues. I did that more than once and highly recommend it. Dogs need breaks.

We used to start rally classes where we were going to spend a lot of time with multiple dogs in the ring with a round of 'its yer choice' and that was really helpful for setting expectations too. Recommended!

Anyway, I was really proud at the last workshop we took, they wanted us to practice having our dog returning their gaze to us from distraction and she wouldn't do more than glance at the instructor, even when he touched her. Completely dismissed barking, staring dogs and dogs walking past. When she was bored of exercises I got her to lie down and flip onto her back for belly rubs, even though we were between two other dogs. People commented on how calm she was about the other dogs, and how good at ignoring them she was. Ha! If they only knew how much work and reinforcement that took!

Oh, and I find taking a 5-10 min walk before going into the building for class very helpful.


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## EJStevenP (Oct 27, 2021)

Meisha said:


> What if the staring is at me? Just went out to pee and poop, has had exercise and play, has food in dish, just had a chew bone, cat has been located, has been petted and spoken to for an extended period. I just need some computer time and both hands to myself for a bit. But no, she just sits in front of me and stares.


This is me and Lucy. She is staring at me RIGHT NOW. Sometimes I try to hide behind my computer but I can feel her watching. Sometimes I wake up and she's face to face staring at me. She's just a stare-er. If I know that everything has been taken care of including loving pats and hugs I will tell her to please go lay down. It works about 95 percent of the time.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

If staring at their person is obsessive then I would work on training the dog to understand how to relax as FWOP has described in working with Annie, but if it just hopeful look at how sweet and adorable I am So Cookie Please that can be easily redirected like EJStevenP described then I would not worry about having a dog that offers eye contact.


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## Piper Bear (Apr 12, 2021)

I have nothing to add to all the great comments Tom. Just want to say that Elroy is a real looker!!


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## 94Magna_Tom (Feb 23, 2021)

Piper Bear said:


> I have nothing to add to all the great comments Tom. Just want to say that Elroy is a real looker!!


Thank you 😘!


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## Minie (Oct 4, 2021)

I don't mind them staring at me but staring at others, especially other dogs, can be perceived as quite provocative. I train the command 'focus' which means they look at me. That way I can break the stare on others. I find it helps Luca when there is a lot going on around us. Time will tell if it help benefit Matteo when we start training classes in March.


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## Charmed (Aug 4, 2014)

When I had a six week class that was all about "watch me", we were working on getting the dogs to make eye contact with us, as opposed to staring at treat in our hand. Of course, Australian Shepherds were really good at this. My poodle and a boxer were having a grand old time watching butterflies, kids across the street, and bunnies in the field. Food treats were not an incentive for them. After much trial and error we discovered that a small squeaky toy worked wonders. It broke their concentration on the "wrong" thing. We did not have to use it much but it helped snap them out of their daydreams. I know this is different than hyper-focused dogs that stare like Superman with x-ray vision, but it is possible that something similar might work to snap a dog out of its concentrated staring. I knw we used to say the quicker you intervened the better, too. Not the most positive thing but when we (the training center, not my personal dog) had a dog aggressive Malinois, we "acked" at him the very second we saw him start to rise up on his toes, get stiff, or get "hard eyes". We had to be really quick before he locked in on a dog. Ugh, I hate dealing with that type mindset. I often wonder if we had started him from a pup, if he would have been a better dog, but then I think probably not, because he was being what he was bred to be.


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## 94Magna_Tom (Feb 23, 2021)

At our Rally class last night, Elroy was much more relaxed than the week before. I think I only had to break his staring up like 10 (brief) times instead of constantly for an hour+. He also never really got into a hard stare that was difficult to break him from. Besides doing his focus & Impulse Control drills, I think he's becoming more accustomed to being in class and NOT being allowed to interact with other dogs.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

That is awesome to see things improving. It will become more and more habitual as you carry along with it. Classes like your rally class will become a lot more relaxed and he will learn better if he is paying more attention to you and what you are doing than if he is interested in staring. As an FYI if you decide to crate at classes I think a darkening cover may be useful for you and Elroy. I can already see that changing Javelin's crate cover is going to be really good for him.


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## 94Magna_Tom (Feb 23, 2021)

lily cd re said:


> That is awesome to see things improving. It will become more and more habitual as you carry along with it. Classes like your rally class will become a lot more relaxed and he will learn better if he is paying more attention to you and what you are doing than if he is interested in staring. As an FYI if you decide to crate at classes I think a darkening cover may be useful for you and Elroy. I can already see that changing Javelin's crate cover is going to be really good for him.


We'll see. I've got an EliteField crate on order. It has shades and screens so I can easily try it both ways.


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## Rian (Sep 17, 2021)

I also don't have anything to add but was taken with how gorgeous your boy is!!


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## 94Magna_Tom (Feb 23, 2021)

Rian said:


> I also don't have anything to add but was taken with how gorgeous your boy is!!


Thank you! ❤


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