How to Get Your Puppy to Take Food Gently and Make Eye Contact

Dog Training

Sep 30

Building Relationship with Your Puppy Through Eye Contact and Hand Feeding | Dog Training

Teaching your puppy to take food nicely or gently and make eye contact is more than just cute. It's a crucial foundation for building good behavior and a strong bond with your furry friend. Just as we shake hands when we meet someone, a puppy learns manners by how it interacts with you. Mealtime is one of our greatest opportunities to use this to our benefit because we have something they want and need. These skills set the stage for a lifetime of trust and communication.

Understanding Puppy Behavior

Puppies are bundles of energy, driven by curiosity and instincts. At their core, food is one of a hungry dog’s primary motivators. Whether they're sniffing out a treat from across the room or pawing at their food bowl, their relationship with food is deeply rooted in survival instincts. Understanding this can help you guide their behavior.

The Importance of Eye Contact

Eye contact is a silent conversation between you and your puppy. It's how they gauge your mood and intentions. Making eye contact strengthens your bond, fostering mutual respect, trust, and an equal flow of understanding. Imagine it as a bridge of understanding. With regular practice, your puppy will look to you for guidance just like finding a north star. They will even begin to make eye contact to ask permission for things.

Training Techniques for Taking Food Nicely & Encouraging Eye Contact

Building gentleness around food is about patience and practice. Here's how to guide your puppy to take food like a well-mannered pup.

Get your supplies

Portion out your puppy’s meal in a small ziplock bag. Put a 6’ leash on your dog and sit on the leash so they stay close to you and don’t get distracted by everything else around them.

Present food

Put a small amount of food in your hand and open your hand and put it about 6-12” away from your dog’s face. Do NOT allow them to get the food. You want them to look at you (specifically in your eyes). As soon as they do that they will get the food, NOT before that.
Think of this as them “asking you for permission”.

If they move their head closer to your hand (prior to making eye contact and getting a cue from you) close your hand and move it away from them so they cannot access the food. They are losing access to the food because of their behavior (trying to get the food without permission). This is teaching them they do not get to have things simply because they want them, they need to have your permission.

With a solid relationship, this should translate into other areas of your life, not just while you are holding their food in your hand.

Wait for eye contact

The first few times, this will take some figuring out on your dog’s part. They will probably nudge your hand with their nose or lick your hand or paw at you etc. In time, they will look at you either out of frustration or in an attempt to get more information about how they can access this food.

Marking eye contact with “yes!”

The very moment they make eye contact with you say “yes!” and open your hand and move the food right to their mouth.

Your puppy will be excited, but probably not yet understand why that happened.
It will take a few times of them doing this before they really start to understand this new “game”.

Increase challenge

Once they get the hang of this, you can start to introduce more challenges to this game. The reason for doing this is so that this behavior and similar ones will be doable for your dog in more realistic situations.

Here are a few ways you can increase the challenge:
(Keep in mind all the same rules apply to this game. They only get the food after you “mark” their eye contact.)
1. Change the location of your hand (to their left, to their right, closer to their face, etc)
2. Move your hand around while your hand is open
3. Use higher value food like treats instead of their normal meal

Maintaining Your Puppy’s Focus

Training isn't always smooth sailing. Puppies have short attention spans. When you are first getting started, minimize distractions by training in a quiet room where they can't see or hear much.

Start with short sessions, even 1-2 minutes. You can increase the length of your sessions when it feels right and your puppy isn’t losing focus as much.

Once they understand this it will feel like a game to them and they will want to do it, so after a handful of mealtime feedings like this they will want to do it and it won’t feel like so much time is being spent doing this.

Conclusion

Teaching your puppy to take food nicely and make eye contact is the cornerstone of a rewarding relationship. With time and consistent practice, your puppy will learn to approach food with grace and look to you for cues, reinforcing the trust and understanding between both of you. These foundational skills build a well-behaved companion, paving the way for further training and deepening your connection. Start today, and watch your partnership grow.

You can find several videos of us doing this exercise with dogs and puppies while they are with us for training on our YouTube page. Here is one of those videos below.

If you want to see us putting these things to practice check out the video below.