Combined pointing and staring works best to get dogs' attention, study finds

Researchers at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna fitted twenty dogs with eye-tracking helmets and placed them in a simple room with a scientist kneeling across from them. On the floor sat two bowls—one held a hidden treat, the other did nothing. The question was straightforward: what combination of human signals would make the dogs look in the right direction?

The experiment ran through five different scenarios, each repeated six times. In one, the scientist pointed at a bowl while maintaining eye contact with the dog. In another, the scientist pointed and looked at the bowl simultaneously. A third involved only looking at the bowl, no gesture. There was even the classic trick many dog owners play—a fake throw, hand empty, the ball never leaving the scientist's grip.

The dogs in the study were a mixed group: eight mongrels alongside Staffordshire terriers, Australian shepherds, and poodles. When the scientist both pointed and stared at the correct bowl, the dogs performed best. They looked in the right direction most reliably. The fake throw, unsurprisingly, confused them. But the real finding lay deeper than simple obedience. The dogs were not merely following a directional arrow. They appeared to grasp something about the meaning embedded in the combined signal—that the gesture and the gaze together were saying something, communicating information about where the treat actually was.

Christoph Voelter, the lead researcher, explained to AFP that pointing and staring work separately, but together they become more powerful. The implication is that dogs do not just react to direction the way a compass needle points north. Instead, they seem to understand referential communication—the idea that a human is intentionally conveying meaning through coordinated body language and eye contact.

Yet Voelter was careful not to overstate what the data showed. The exact nature of canine understanding remains unclear. Do dogs experience these combined signals as a command—an imperative to go somewhere—or do they grasp it as genuine communication, a sharing of information between two minds? The distinction matters. One is obedience; the other is comprehension.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, draws from a field called natural pedagogy, which typically examines how humans teach children through communication cues like pointing and naming. Researchers are now exploring whether the same principles apply to dogs. The next phase of work will investigate whether dogs learn and retain information better when they are directly addressed—when the human is not just gesturing but actively engaging them in the exchange.

For dog owners struggling to get their pets to fetch slippers or follow directions, the takeaway is practical: combine your point with your gaze. But for animal cognition researchers, the finding opens a wider door. It suggests that dogs may be parsing human communication in ways we are only beginning to measure, and that the bond between human and dog involves something more intricate than simple command and response.