My 15 year old son brought up an interesting topic yesterday. Our dog, a 12 year old Bichon, will not look my son in the eye. As soon as he looks at her, she looks away.
The dog will look into my eyes for an enormous amount of time, but not his.
I realize looking into the eyes can be a dominance thing with dogs. The two of them get along just fine otherwise. He feeds her and pets her and takes her for walks. Why won’t she maintain a gaze with him?
Perhaps she trusts you more and/or identifies you as mommy. My cats will look me in the eyes but not each other. Does your dog exhibit more puppy-mommy behaviors with you than your son?
If the dog is 12 and the son 15, that means the dog lived through a period when your son must have been annoying/playing too rough with the dog.
My gut feeling is that in terms of pack hierarchy, your dog places itself above you and below your son. Other ways to tell if this is the case: the dog will often lie down or sit in your favorite seat/chair, and ignore you when you tell it to move, but will automatically move if it is in your son’s place. Another one is during mealtimes, the dog will beg from you but not from your son.
Cat staring is completely different. A cat will stare at you with either sleepy or alert eyes. Sleepy eyes means they trust you, alert eyes means they don’t or they expect you to do something. Not staring (like at each other) means they don’t care.
My money is on the fifteen year old, in the past, has had a few stare downs with this dog. Learned behaviour, plain and simple.