Mental and emotional well-being is critical if your labrador puppy is to grow into a healthy family pet. Psychological health is just as important as physical health, perhaps more important.

For mental stability, it is critical that your labrador puppy knows that their world is a place of safe and secure relationships. It’s up to you to establish and maintain a safe, calm and trusting environment for your dog.
You will need a clear understanding of your dogs mental and emotional needs. A solid trusting relationship means that you will accurately engage with your labrador. And you will be looking excessive energy, fear, timidity or aggressive behaviour.

Accurately attending to your dog’s emotional needs nurtures and builds the relationship between you as the handler and your labrador. This is the most critical factor in preventing behavioural problems. Generous, affectionate and patient leadership rather than dominant and aversive tactics build a confident, secure, trusting labrador puppy. And a confident labrador will offer behaviours without fear of aversive correction.

Dogs are social creatures, just as we are. Your labrador puppies first ‘imprint period’ is 8 to 16 wks of age. However, I treat the first year as a continuous “imprint period”. From this early age your puppy ‘must’ engage in two-way non-threatening interactions.
If trust is broken you might damage your relationship with your labrador puppy and this is often irretrievable.

Conditioning & socialising your puppy from 8wks means meeting 100 people in 100 days. This is essential. Likewise, meeting other (vaccinated) dogs in a controlled environment is strongly encouraged for the sake of confident and appropriate dog to dog behaviour from your labrador.
There is a high risk of behavioural uncertainty and instability if your puppy does not engage in appropriate socialisation opportunities. Dog to dog aggression and dog to people aggression can be the result. You must teach and normalise a wide variety of experiences for your labrador puppy.