Re: How does my dog know to look at my face?
Dogs greet face to face. That's a handshake in their culture. That's why they like to jump on people. He's trying to get to your face to say hi. (So incidentally, a good habit to get into is to lower yourself to him when you come home, if you don't like him jumping on people.)
Why is this their greeting? I would guess that it's just a basic reflection of dogs' relative lack of sophistication. They naturally form this behavior, because it's inherently reciprocal.
Dogs communicate well with each other, mostly through body language, and rely on communication to hunt. So it seems natural that they learn to ascribe importance to the eye area, since their form of communication will rely upon them looking at each other. Since the exchange is reciprocal, it just seems naturally efficient that they would learn to fixate on each other's face rather than any other part of the body. (If you're looking at his chest, you don't know when exactly he stops looking at/communicating with you.)
I'm not an expert on this stuff, but that's my basic assumption for why they evolve that instinct.
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