Eye Contact and the Shepherd Mind
When people meet a German Shepherd, they often look straight into the dog’s eyes. They mean well. They’re trying to connect.
With a dog that doesn’t know me, my advice is to do less. If you’re about to meet an unfamiliar dog, the practical version is in Why Most People Get It Wrong in the First 5 Seconds. Here I’m interested in the narrower question: what a look can tell us, and where we start guessing.
A Stare Is Not the Same as a Gaze
A hard, sustained stare from an unfamiliar person can put pressure on a dog. Relaxed eye contact between a dog and someone they know is a different situation.
The BC SPCA advises people not to stare directly at or hold the gaze of a dog they’re approaching, because dogs may perceive that kind of eye contact as threatening or aggressive.
That’s about what the person is doing with their eyes. What the dog is doing with theirs is a different question.
Megan Maxwell, writing for the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, describes relaxed dogs as often showing an almond-shaped or slightly squinted eye along with an open mouth and relaxed ears. As a dog becomes more nervous or defensive, the mouth may close, the ears may pin back or move forward and the eyes may become rounder. In another example, she describes “whale eye,” where the eyes angle enough for the whites to show. She also describes the difference some owners can see between a dog’s hard stare and a soft gaze.
Even then, the face, body and situation still have to agree with the story I’m telling myself.
Watch More Than the Eyes
I don’t look at a dog’s eyes and decide I know what the dog is thinking. I watch what happens to the rest of them.
I can watch a dog without fixing my eyes on their face. I’m looking at posture, movement, the mouth, distance and what changes from one moment to the next.
Does the dog suddenly stop moving? Did the mouth close? Has the body become rigid? Are they leaning away, turning their head or trying to step back?
A dog that looks away may be trying to reduce the pressure. I don’t assume the dog is refusing to cooperate simply because they don’t hold my gaze.
Maxwell also points out that body stillness is easy to miss. She describes dogs standing still, sometimes looking or leaning away, while people continue looming, petting or patting them.
I’d rather notice those smaller changes while they’re still small.
But one signal doesn’t tell the entire story either. A closed mouth, a turned head, a yawn or a moment of stillness has to be read with everything else that is happening. We get ourselves into trouble when we take one piece of dog body language and turn it into a translation dictionary.
Before the Dog Knows You
A newly adopted dog can be living in your house before there’s much of a relationship to lean on. The house is new, the routines are new and so are the people.
The BC SPCA describes moving into a new home as stressful for a dog because so much of the environment is unfamiliar. That doesn’t tell me what the dog is thinking when they look at me. It tells me the context has changed, and I have very little shared history to help me interpret the look.
This is where people can make a mess of a perfectly good intention. A new dog looks at you and it’s easy to treat the look as an invitation because you’re eager to connect. Maybe it is. Maybe the dog is simply gathering information. Early on, I have less history to help me tell the difference.
My way of handling those early days is to sit down and leave the dog alone. That’s my practice, not a rule from the BC SPCA. I’m giving both of us time for the dog’s patterns, and our relationship, to become clearer.
For the adjustment period itself, including decompression, routine and gradually adding freedom, go to The First 90 Days After Adoption.
A Taught Check-In Is Different
With a dog I know, a taught check-in can be useful on a walk or when something else has their attention. I may ask the dog to look toward me because we’ve taught that communication together. That’s a completely different interaction from an unfamiliar person holding a dog’s gaze and expecting them to be comfortable with it.
What Changes When the Dog Knows You
Once a relationship develops, looking at one another can mean something quite different.
A 2020 review of research into gaze communication between dogs and humans discusses dogs using visual attention in several social situations and notes that gazing behaviour is influenced by socialization and life experience. It also discusses studies in which dogs looked back toward people during tasks they couldn’t solve, while cautioning that the function of that looking isn’t always clear.
A 2015 study published in Science reported an oxytocin-related feedback loop associated with mutual gaze between dogs and their owners. Interesting, but that study was about dogs and their own owners, not strangers, and it doesn’t mean every kind of eye contact has the same meaning.
I see the practical difference with Kai. A stranger fixing their eyes on him is one situation. Kai glancing up at me during a walk is another. We know one another. We’ve spent every day building a working relationship, and he checks in with me as the world changes around us.
Sometimes he’s checking where I’m going. Sometimes he wants something. Sometimes something changed ahead of us and he looks back at me. And sometimes I’m fairly sure he’s making certain I noticed the dog across the street before he has to explain it more loudly.
I know he looked at me. Why he did it is the part I have to be careful about pretending I know.
Eye Contact Doesn’t Have One Meaning
Dogs look at us for all kinds of reasons, and I don’t think you can separate the look from what was happening around it. Who was there? What had just happened? Was the dog loose and moving normally, or standing there like a statue?
With a dog who doesn’t know me, I’d still rather start with less pressure and see what happens. They may come over. They may keep watching from across the room. They may decide I’m boring as hell and go lie down somewhere else. Fine. We’ve got time.
Where to Go Next
Eye contact is only one piece of what a dog is telling you. The harder question is what happens when the ears, mouth, posture, movement, distance and situation are all saying slightly different things.
That broader way of reading a dog is what I get into in Shepherd Body Language: looking at posture, movement and signals in context instead of treating one behaviour as a complete explanation.
This article provides general educational information about canine behaviour. A dog showing persistent fear, aggression or a sudden behavioural change should be assessed by a veterinarian or qualified reward-based behaviour professional.
