Recall That Works: The 4 Levels of Freedom Explained
11 May 2025 · 17 min
In this episode of the Dog People Podcast, host Jack Lawrence interviews professional dog trainer Max O'Neill (Down Under Dog Training) to break down five core strategies for reliable dog recall. The conversation introduces Max’s proprietary “4 Levels of Freedom” framework (short lead, long lead, dropped/dragging lead, off‑lead) and explains how owners can determine when to progress using concrete criteria (dog can return despite distractions and do so consistently for three consecutive days). The episode then covers four supporting pillars: (1) Proofing – practicing recall in varied environments, distances, and with different distractions; (2) Reinforcement – identifying and using truly motivating rewards rather than ineffective treats; (3) Accountability – using the leash as a tool to enforce the cue and build a reliable response; and (4) No‑Strings‑Attached – structuring recall calls so the dog associates the cue with frequent positive outcomes rather than a single “end‑of‑play” reward. Max shares anecdotes about his own dogs (Kira, Nelson) and client experiences to illustrate each point, emphasizes the importance of not rushing the process, and encourages listeners to join the Dog People Facebook group for further support. The episode also contains several sponsor reads (Grow Therapy, Vuori, Chase, Total Wine, Ozempic, Capella) that are peripheral to the core instructional content.
Chapters
Hello, dog peeps. Jack here. Just a quick one before we get into this episode. You may or may not be aware that when I'm not talking dog stuff with Max, I in fact interview people who are incarcerated in prisons across the United States on a show called One Minute Remaining: Stories from the Inmates. And that show has been nominated for an award in America. And I would love your support if you've got 60 seconds to click the link in the show notes of this episode and just vote for my show. That would be amazing if you could. Thank you very much indeed. Oh, and don't forget to verify your email address. Otherwise, the vote does not count. Thank you.
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The amount of people I see having to shove food in their dog's face, their dog's looking away. I'm like, that's not a reinforcer.
Okay.
Like that's just, it's just not.
Eat it. It's yummy chicken. It's the Dog People Podcast with your host, Jack Lawrence. Secretly, I decided to start this podcast For some free dog training advice. You know, Malinois seem to be like the dog at the moment. Like, I think people see them on Instagram doing these incredible things. Yeah. Go, oh my God, that's awesome. And then they get one like, oh my God, what the fuck have I done? And Max O'Neill.
You would not believe how many people I meet and I go, what made you want to get, say, an Aussie Shepherd? They go, I don't know. I'd go, had you met one before? They go, no. If you want to ask me how often I walk my own dog a week, it's only twice a week.
It's the Dog People Podcast, the podcast giving you a no-nonsense approach to dog training so you never have to shout, it's okay, he's friendly. My name is Jack Lawrence, a dog training enthusiast, not a dog trainer, but Max O'Neill from Down Under Dog Training is indeed a dog trainer. And Max, we are going to cover a subject that is probably one of the highest on the list of subjects when it comes to dog training, and that is recall.
Yeah. So today, Jack, I wanted to go through our 5 top tips for recall. At some stage, we will do a video on this as well and actually show you how we do those. But I think today, by giving you enough advice and some really solid information on those 5 top tips, you implementing these in your training should really get you some massive results pretty quickly.
So, tip number 1 when it comes to recall, hit me.
There's going to be what's called our 4 levels of freedom, proofing, reinforcement, accountability, and then lastly, no strings attached. And we'll go through all of those now. So, in no particular order, let's start through our 4 levels of freedom. So this is something that we do a little bit differently to everyone else, and, um, it's why we get really, really good results with that recall, if I'm really honest. So something you'll hear a lot, you know, if especially if you're, you know, browsing training videos on Instagram or YouTube, is you'll hear trainers saying you shouldn't give your dog too much freedom too quickly. You should, you know, start off on a short lead, or you start off on a lead before you go off lead. Like, I don't disagree with that, but for me that's very vague. If I am an owner training my dog, I'm like, okay, well How long should this lead be? When do I know to progress? What am I like? It's— there's a lot of questions that leave. So what we want to do today is really spell that out for you. So we tell owners to abide by what's called our 4 levels of freedom. Those 4 levels in progressive order are short lead, long lead, dropped lead where they drag it around, and then finally then off lead. So we get all owners to start their recall off on a short lead, and we get to them before they can move up We get them to ask themselves a few questions. So rather than going, well, is it time? Is it not time? You'll absolutely know when it's time if you ask these questions. One, can your dogs come back from other dogs, food on the ground, people, and in new places? If your dog can do all 4 of those things, that's one big tick. The second tick you've got to ask yourself is, okay, if my dog can do this, can my dog do it consistently? And what we say with consistency is, can my dog do it for 3 consecutive days in a row? Okay. So, rather than just going, oh yeah, once they've got it, move up. Again, that's vague. Ask yourself those questions. That's very specific. And if your dog can tick those off, they can come back through dogs, people, food, and places. They can do that 3 days in a row.
Boom.
We move up from the short lead to the long lead. We do all the recall training again. Once you can answer those questions again, my dog can come back from dogs, people, places, food, and they can do this 3 consecutive days in a row. We move them up another level again. And then finally, only when they can do that, then we move eventually to off lead. So it gives you a really steady order of progression. It should take you about 4 weeks to progress through that. But if you are really diligent and committed to that and don't give your dog too much freedom too soon, you manage all this appropriately, within a month you can turn your recall around very quickly.
That's something, that's something I 100% did wrong. I think I got too confident too quick.
Yep.
It's like with anything in life, I think, you know, people want to get to the end result as quickly as possible. And I was no different. I'm like, I want my dog to be like perfect, great. Let's go off lead, away you go. And then it only takes that one moment where your dog ignores the recall.
Yep.
And that's a couple of ticks against your name because as soon as the dog makes that association with it, they're like, oh, hold on a second, I don't actually have to listen to you. That— this is cool. And once the dog learns a bad habit, it's so much harder to train them out of that as opposed to making sure that that doesn't happen in the first place.
100%.
And rushing it. And I am 100% guilty of this because I have, I'm so impatient with everything in life and rushing that and going too quickly, moving too quickly and expecting too much of the dog too soon. It's just going to bite you in the ass in the long run. And that was me 110% because I got too overconfident too quickly. So it really is about being honest with yourself when you ask those questions, you know, will your dog come back and say, and you know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, he kind of, he sort of ignored me to start with, but then he came. It's like, no, no, it needs to be that quick. Turn, bang. If they're doing that every time, move up. Um, so that's— I think that's a big thing.
Don't rush.
Take my word for that, because rushing does not do you any good.
100%. If you've got a puppy, you've got a brilliant opportunity. If you've already done this and made a mistake, it's cool. Just like I said, strip it back to level 1 and gradually work through those 4 levels of freedom.
Yeah, cool.
Point number 2 is proofing. So proofing is getting your dog used to doing this behaviour in a variety of different contexts with a bunch of different things happening. The problem with our dogs is they're highly contextual. You can practise all you want in the backyard, that will not translate to the beach, that will not translate to a dog park, that will not translate to a forest, etc. So, anywhere we want our dog to perform an action or a behaviour or be, you know, consistent in their behaviour and obedience with us, we need to practise in that environment. It's the whole reason with our group classes, our Pro Pups Academy, our Pupply Blues, our Good Canine Citizens is Half the programme is done outside of the facility. There's no point just training for 8 or 10 weeks in this one place because you learn all these skills, you go to the beach, your dog forgets it. So instead, we do half our training at the beach, park, cafes, shopping centre, et cetera.
Yeah, that's great. I love the way you do that.
So the dog learns it and you guys need to do the same. So with proofing is there's a couple of different things you want to work on. You want to proof it in terms of distance. Can your dog do this a couple of metres away from you? Can your dog do it 30 or 40 metres away from you? And like I said before, with all the distractions and things, can your dog do it with people, places, food? But also those new places you need to practise. If you want to go down to Burleigh Heads Beach and have your dogs come back, you need to train there. The amount of people I get message me saying, hey, look, my dog's great at recalling the backyard and the house, but as soon as we go to the beach, they don't do it. Why is that? I go, well, how often do you train at the beach? And it's exactly that.
Yeah.
Just like athletes need to learn to train under higher pressures or at different places and perform in moments. Our dogs need to learn the same. So your dog, any dog can be king or queen of the backyard or the lounge room, but wherever you want your dog to listen, you've got to go practise in that environment. That's point number 2.
Kira barely has been to the beach. I was just thinking about that when you were saying go to the beach. And funnily enough, we live so close to the beach, but I rarely ever take Kira to the beach. Number one, because I don't like the beach. But I know that if I, you know, I've got to get there because at some point we will go there because we've never done any training at the beach. I think I may have taken her once to the beach, but she was on a long line. I would say outside of the where we go walking every day now, her recall is 99.999999% rock solid. Yeah. If I go to the beach, I couldn't say that.
Yeah.
So she would be on a long line and we would be practicing recall, doing what we normally do, all the same thing, but on a long line.
You guys should just jump on our next Good Canine Citizens program and do Beach Week with us.
Yeah, 100%. Sign me up.
Sign me up, Buttercup.
Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as 2 days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com/startnow. That's growtherapy.com/startnow. growtherapy.com/startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
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Point number 3 is reinforcement. So by definition, reinforcement is providing our dog or someone or something with something they actually need. Now, so often I see people go, oh, we've tried treat training, it doesn't work. And that's cool, but if it doesn't work, it's probably because you're— a part of that is your dog doesn't actually want it. The amount of people I see having to shove food in their dog's face, their dog's looking away. I'm like, that's not a reinforcer.
Okay.
Like, that's just—
it's just not.
Eat it.
It's yummy chicken.
So, reinforcement, we want to actually deal— and we've done an episode of this, dog training currency. So, if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to that. But we want to provide or attach, you know, that currency, whatever our dog's into, to the recall behaviour. Okay. That might be play. That might be delivering food in a certain way. That might be a toy. That could be a whole heap of things. But we need to actually deal in a currency that they actually want to work for. If we're just shoving food in their place, if we're just giving them a pat on the head, which they get 100 times a day for free anyway, that is not something they'll work for. So, your reinforcement needs to be worth the effort that it is to sprint back To you, and it needs to be worth giving up whatever they're coming away from, whether that's an interaction with the dog or a nice smell or a pie that's been dropped on the ground. So, you need to look at your reinforcement and up that. And again, if you need help figuring out what's a good reinforcer from your dog, you can go back to listen episode about dog training currency, or you can post it in the group and we can help you troubleshoot that. Point number 4 is accountability. So, with any behaviour we teach that we want to be consistent and reliable and actually an actionable command rather than just a game, There needs to be accountability. So we don't— our dogs, a lot of our dogs will know what recall is. If we were to say, hey, look, Fred, what does it mean when Amanda says here to you? Oh, it means she wants me to run back, sit in front of her and get a treat. Why don't you do it? He goes, oh, well, it's just a game. I don't actually need to. So accountability. And that's where a leash comes in, is we can make this happen.
Yeah.
Okay. So a good, you know, word to live by or phrase to live by or a dogma, no pun intended, live by is say it once and make it happen.
Yeah.
So if you've got your dog on a lead and you call them, you know, for example, Kira, here, and she goes, nah, I'm good, you can use a lead to pop, pop and pull her towards you like, no, like, this is going to happen.
Yeah.
You can either choose to comply and do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way and I can just reel you in. Either way, when I say here, you are coming. And that's how conditioning starts to happen. So accountability, we can start to show our dog, hey, if you come to me, No leash. If you don't come to me, I'm going to start to nag you on that.
Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull.
Okay, fine. And then until they come back, and they're soon going to learn, you know what, when Jack calls me, if I just come back straight away, I can avoid all this pull, pull, pull, pull, pull altogether. Just as you would have done with Kira. And then the end result is a couple of things. One, you create a dynamic of, hey, when I ask this to happen, this just happens. That becomes a relationship dynamic. So, the time you let your dog off lead and there is no accountability, You've created a dynamic that they want to uphold. Again, just like, you know, wherever you work, whether you're an employee or a boss or whatever, is you just do your job. Okay. You kind of just get on and do it. Even if no one's watching, even if you, you know, could get away with not doing it, most people will just do it because that's just the way things are done. And you can get your dog to that point. The second thing that can start to happen is, again, conditioning. If you're consistently going, every time I call you, You're coming back to me one way or another. You're either coming back to me voluntarily or you're coming back to me because I'm having to reel you in. Either way, that cue of, you know, Kira, here is paired with that action of your dog properly recalling. Conditioning starts to happen. And what I mean by that is once it's reached the stage of conditioning, it's a reflexive response and it's involuntary. You almost can't help it, right?
Yeah.
It's programmed. It's one of those things where you go, oh, God, that's a weird habit I've got, you know. You know, so for example, we're at the beach with Nelson maybe 3 weeks ago, and he found this big, dirty, stinky puffer fish that washed up on shore. Now, he knew I had nothing on me. I was in my Speedos, so I was obviously not wearing a treat pouch. And he could see, he goes, well, those Speedos don't look— look pretty empty. I don't think you're packing anything in there.
Certainly not any treats.
So he goes, well—
No German sausage for me today.
So he goes, you've got no reinforcer, you've got no accountability whatsoever, and I've just found the biggest, dirtiest, smelliest fish. But I called him and without hesitation, boom, he came back straight away because conditioning. It was a reflexive response. When he came back, he was probably like, I kind of shortchanged myself there. But what we saw was almost an involuntary and reflexive behavior. So that's why you want accountability.
What you— I remember when I came to you, um, with, with Kira, because I— she would— when I first brought her to you, we shared this tug toy that she really loved, and I used— I was using that. Yeah. To Get her to recall.
Yep.
Like, you know, because she was obviously she had massive prey drive and if she would chase a bike, leave it, she'd turn. I'd have the, the tug toy there and she'd like, oh yeah. But if I didn't have the tug toy, yeah, she'd look back and go, I'm sorry, what? Yeah, what am I coming back for? Yeah, you've got nothing there for me.
Yeah.
And you said to me, put that away.
Yeah.
Hide it, put it behind your back, put it in your pocket, do the recall, then produce the toy. It's like, yeah, we go. So that's, that's one big thing. You helped me with. And the long line again for me was a game changer in that Kira stayed on the long line, I think, until she was about 14 months old. Because we did have issues, because again, I said, as I said, I got too confident too quickly. And we had a couple of issues where she did— she didn't recall. I was like, I cannot have any more of that. I can't have that happen again. She has to learn that there is no ignoring this recall. And that's why she stayed on the long line. It was just like If you ignore me, you're being reeled back in. And I remember watching a video, I don't know who it was now, a trainer online said a great thing. He's like, don't say it if you can't enforce it.
Yep, 1 million percent.
Don't say it if you can't enforce it because they just learn to ignore you and that you become like, eh, whatever.
You know, that, that becomes a dynamic if your dog learns that you as a boss are pretty relaxed and we go, hey, do this. They go, nah, I'm good. And they go, okay, cool. They're gonna learn that. So And that's exactly right is, you know, one, a little equation, and we'll do an episode on this on a direct versus indirect reward and whatnot, reward presentation. But the equation Jack mentioned there is the behaviour should produce the reward. The reward shouldn't produce a behaviour.
Absolutely.
A last point for recall, point number 5, final one is no strings attached. What I mean by that is whenever I'm training at a dog park and I'll just be keeping an eye on things in there, I'll see people take their dog to the park, Let them off, ignore the dog for the next 45 minutes while they're on the phone, which is a whole different topic, and then only call them at the end when it's time to go home. So, that dog obviously has a very strong association that Fred here means Fred, we're going home. Fred, the fun's over. So, what I want you to do if you are going to a park, and this is what I do still religiously to this day if I'm at the beach with my dog, is I'll let him off and I'll call him back 10 or 15 times and then only take him home on the last one. So, his association is 90% of the time when I come back to Dad, there's a big reinforcer and then I'm allowed to go again. There's no strings attached to this. Only at the end does it— do we go. And by then he's like, cool, I've got what I need out of it. This is fine. And guys, doing this recall should be a key highlight of your dog's adventure to the park rather than it being, I went to the park and then Dad called me home at the end. It should be like your dog should go to bed that night going, dear diary, today my park trip was amazing and Dad called me back 10 times or Mum called me back 10 times and it was So much fun. That's how your dog needs to view it. So if you put those 5 tips in place, you'll notice immediately recall results. And if you're consistent with this application of those 5 top tips within a month, absolute game changer.
But so many of our other episodes tie into this as well, because again, it's about that relationship building with the dog that it wants to be with you because you're the source of fun.
Exactly.
So it's not, as you said, it's not like we go to the park, see you later, mate. You enjoy yourself. I'm going to sit over here on my phone. And then when we're done, I'm going to call you back. You're not, you're not the person who, you know, stops the fun. You're the one who creates the fun. You're the one that's like everything good comes from you. Yeah. And, you know, with Kira and I, when we're out, when we're, when I take her out, I'm recalling her. Oh, I don't know how many times, like I lost track of it, but I'm recalling it for a purpose because I'm recalling her to put her into a heel, to throw the ball, to go and get her to fetch it. It's all about games, games, games, games, games.
Exactly.
So when I'm recalling her because it's time to leave, She just comes over and it's just, okay, we put the lead on. I say, that's it, we're off. And that's it, we're done.
Recall starts the next activity with you.
Yeah. All right, there you go. There are your top tips for recall. Of course, we'll do a video on that as well for you very shortly. We'll chuck that up in the Facebook group. And of course, if you haven't joined the group yet, that is the place where you need to go for all your questions. Chuck them in there and we will get to them. It's the Dog People Podcast on Facebook. The Dog People Podcast is a Mashed Pumpkin production hosted by Jack Lawrence and Max O'Neill. Edited, produced, and audio production by Jack Lawrence. There's only one Ozempic.
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