How to Train a Labrador Puppy: First Weeks to First Year
Updated: 24 hours ago
By Nick, co-founder of Doggy Styles Inc and owner of Bruno, a rescued French Bulldog. Last updated 15 October 2026.
Quick Answer
To train a Labrador puppy, start on day one with short, reward-based sessions, and use his appetite to your advantage. The first priorities are house training, a crate or safe space, gentle handling and lots of calm socialisation in the early weeks. Then teach the basics that make a Labrador easy to live with: sit, settle, 'leave it', recall and walking on a loose lead. Expect mouthiness, bounce and a teenage wobble between about six months and two years. Keep training kind and consistent: research shows punishment-based methods leave dogs more stressed, without making them better behaved.
Key takeaways
Start on day one, keep sessions to a few minutes and pay well, with food from his daily allowance.
Socialisation, house training, calm and 'leave it' matter more early on than tricks.
Reward-based training works better and is kinder. Punishment adds stress and fixes nothing.
If you're still getting to know the breed, start here:
👉 LABRADOR GUIDE — Full Behaviour, Personality & Ownership Breakdown
How to train a Labrador puppy: what people get wrong
The usual mistake is assuming that a breed famous for being easy to train will more or less train itself. Labradors are easy to teach. They're just as easy to teach the wrong things, and they learn both at the same speed.
Owners are honest about it. Robbie's owner, on Purina's owner stories, advises: "Be patient and not shout at them, they can be stubborn." Sidro's owner, also on Purina, sums up the main project in four words: "Learning how to calm down." And not every Lab fits the food-obsessed stereotype. Ian's owner, on Purina, notes: "He isn't as food obsessed as most labs so training can be difficult unless you have cheese." There is, it turns out, always cheese.
A note on the stories in this post: the dated moments (week one, month two and so on) are illustrative scenes based on common Labrador owner experiences, not the story of one real dog. The owner quotes are real, and link to where they were published.
The first night
Week one. Bedtime. You settle him in his crate with a warm blanket and a chew, close the door gently and go upstairs. Silence. Then a small, heartbroken whimper. You lie awake for an hour working out whether to go down. In the end you bring the crate up to the bedroom for the first week, and he sleeps through until five. So, it turns out, do you. Mostly.
A Labrador puppy's first year at a glance
Age | Focus | Typical challenges |
8 to 10 weeks | Settling in, toilet routine, name, crate, gentle handling | Night waking, accidents, whining |
10 to 16 weeks | Socialisation, sit, come, 'leave it', short alone times | Mouthing, stealing, overexcitement |
4 to 6 months | Loose-lead walking, settle, recall with distractions | Teething, chewing, pulling |
6 to 18 months | Consistency, impulse control, keeping recall solid | Selective deafness, jumping up, testing limits |
18 months on | Polish and maintain, introduce new skills or sports | Occasional relapses, especially when excited |
Owners recognise every row. The eight-week-old who sits beautifully on day two. The four-month-old who has eaten a skirting board. The ten-month-old who appears never to have heard the word 'come'. Then, somewhere around two, the dog everyone hoped for.
That eager, bouncy, food-powered learner is what Doggy Styles Inc designs around: clean, minimal Labrador pieces for people with a treat pouch on every coat.
👉 Shop Labrador women's t-shirts, unisex t-shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies
👉 or explore the full LABRADOR COLLECTION
Why Labradors are easy to train, and why they're not
Built to work with people
Labradors were bred to take direction from a handler on a shoot, and they're still among the most trainable breeds, which is why they're used so widely as guide, assistance and detection dogs. They watch you, they want to work out what you want, and they'll do almost anything for a reward.
Big, bouncy and mouthy
The challenge is everything else. A Labrador puppy grows fast, mouths everything, gets overexcited easily and stays adolescent for a long time. The training isn't hard. Staying consistent through two years of enthusiasm is.
What the research says
How you train matters as much as what you train. Ana Catarina Vieira de Castro and colleagues at the University of Porto studied 92 companion dogs from seven training schools in Portugal, using reward-based, aversive or mixed methods. Dogs trained with aversive methods showed more stress behaviours during training, such as crouching and yelping, and bigger rises in the stress hormone cortisol afterwards. In a follow-up test, they also reacted more pessimistically to ambiguous situations (Vieira de Castro and colleagues, PLOS ONE, 2020). Dogs weren't randomly assigned to schools, so it shows a strong link rather than proof, but it fits a growing body of research pointing the same way. The authors concluded that aversive methods "should be avoided because of their negative impact on dog welfare".
For a Labrador, the case is even simpler. He'll work enthusiastically for food and praise. Shouting, lead jerks and harsh corrections add stress and damage trust, and don't make him learn any faster.
Why naps are part of the training
There's early evidence that dogs, like people, consolidate what they've learned while they sleep. In 2017, researchers in Hungary recorded the sleep brain activity of pet dogs after training sessions, and found that changes in their sleep after learning were linked to how well they performed afterwards (AAHA NEWStat, on the study in Scientific Reports). The studies were small and the results mixed, so this is a promising idea rather than settled science. Either way, it's one more reason to keep sessions short and let a puppy nap afterwards. He isn't skiving. He's filing.
That food motivation is your best training tool, as long as it's counted.
👉 WHY ARE LABRADORS ALWAYS HUNGRY? — The Science Behind the Appetite
Before he comes home: the Labrador puppy checklist
A crate big enough for an adult Lab, with a divider. Labradors grow fast. A divider lets the crate grow with him, and stops it being big enough to use one end as a toilet.
Stair gates. For the stairs, which his growing joints shouldn't be tackling at speed, and for the kitchen, which his nose will want to tackle at every opportunity.
Tough chews and a few toys to rotate. Teething Labradors can destroy a standard toy in an afternoon. Buy the heavy-duty versions, and expect them to be tested.
A harness, a lead and a long line. The long line is for recall practice later. You'll be very glad of it around month eight.
An enzyme cleaner. For the accidents. Ordinary cleaners leave a smell he can still find, and he'll take it as an invitation.
A lidded bin and a lidded laundry basket. Not optional. Ask anyone.
His current food. Keep him on what the breeder fed for the first couple of weeks, and change gradually if you need to.
The first priorities: the weeks that matter most
House training. Take him outside after every sleep, meal and play session, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and every hour or so in between. Reward him the moment he goes in the right place. Clean accidents with an enzyme cleaner and say nothing.
A safe space. A crate or puppy pen, introduced gradually with treats and chews, gives him somewhere to rest, keeps him safe when you can't watch and helps with house training.
Socialisation. The early weeks, before about 12 to 14 weeks old, are when puppies most readily learn that the world is safe. Calmly introduce him to different people, children, friendly vaccinated dogs, traffic, the vacuum, car journeys and being handled. Quality matters more than quantity: short, positive experiences beat one overwhelming trip.
Handling. Gently touch his paws, ears and mouth every day, with treats, so vet visits, grooming and nail clipping are easy later.
Short alone times. Start leaving him for a few minutes at a time from the first week, so being alone is normal.
The garden at 6am
Month two. Six o'clock in the morning, in your dressing gown, in the rain, in the garden, saying 'busy busy' in an encouraging voice to a puppy who is far more interested in a worm. He finally goes. You praise him as if he's won an Olympic medal. A neighbour's curtain twitches. This is your life now, and it's working.
Short, calm alone times from the start are the best protection against a clingy adult Labrador.
👉 WHY ARE LABRADORS SO CLINGY? — Needy, Velcro or Anxious?
Puppy biting and mouthing
Every Labrador puppy mouths. They explore the world with their mouths, and a retriever's mouth is busier than most. Harvey's owner, on Purina's owner stories, names his biggest challenge as "Stopping him chewing feet or arms". Most owners will nod.
Redirect, every time. Keep a toy within reach and offer it the moment teeth meet skin. Praise him for biting the toy.
Pause the fun. If he keeps mouthing you, calmly stop playing, stand still or step away for a few seconds. He learns that teeth on skin ends the game.
Check for tiredness. Puppies need a great deal of sleep, and an overtired puppy bites far more. A 'crazy half hour' often means he needs a nap, not more play.
Give him things to chew. Teething puppies need safe chews. Offer a few, rotated, and he'll leave the furniture alone more often.
The teething timeline
Most Labrador puppies start losing their baby teeth at around three to four months, and have their full set of adult teeth by around six to seven months. Expect sore gums, chewing at everything and the occasional tiny tooth on the carpet. Cold, safe chews help. So does moving your shoes.
Teaching a Labrador puppy to be calm
Calm is a skill, and for a Labrador it's often the most important one.
Capture calm. Whenever he lies down quietly, drop a treat between his paws without a word. He'll start offering calm more often.
Teach a 'settle' on a mat. Reward him for lying on a mat, then for staying there a little longer, while you sit nearby. Take it everywhere: the kitchen, the pub, a friend's house.
Build in naps. Young puppies need lots of sleep. Put him in his crate or pen with a chew for regular rest, even if he insists he isn't tired.
Don't reward the bounce. Greet him when he's calm, not while he's leaping. Ask visitors to do the same.
Loose-lead walking and recall
Walking nicely. Labradors are strong and enthusiastic, and pulling is easy to learn and hard to unlearn. Reward him for walking by your side, often. If the lead goes tight, stop and wait, or turn the other way, and move on when it's loose. Use a well-fitting harness rather than a collar while he learns.
Recall. Start indoors and in the garden, with a word or a whistle he'll only hear for good things. Pay with the best treats, or a quick retrieve. Practise on a long line in open spaces, and never call him to end the fun. Call, reward, let him go again.
Use the retriever in him. Labradors love to fetch, and retrieving games are a brilliant way to build recall and focus. Many owners borrow from gundog training, using a whistle and a dummy, even if they'll never go near a shoot.
The teenage phase
Somewhere between six months and a year, many Labradors appear to forget everything. Recall goes, jumping up returns, and a dog who sat perfectly at four months now looks at you as if 'sit' is a new and puzzling idea.
It's normal, and it passes. Go back a step: practise in easier places, raise the value of your rewards, keep him on a long line if recall has wobbled, and stay calm and consistent. Most Labradors come out the other side between eighteen months and two years. The ones whose owners kept going are usually the best-behaved.
Living with a Labrador puppy
Day to day, a Labrador puppy is enormous fun and very hard work. He'll make you laugh most days, test your patience most days and grow visibly most weeks. The first few months are the hardest, especially the broken nights and the endless supervision.
A sample day for a 12-week-old Labrador
6am: out to the garden, straight away. Breakfast, partly from a puzzle feeder.
7am: a few minutes of training: name, sit, a little hand-touch. Then a nap in the crate.
10am: a short socialisation trip: sitting outside a café, watching the world go by, treats for calm.
Midday: lunch, garden, a gentle play, then a long sleep.
3pm: a few minutes of handling practice, ears, paws and mouth, plus a short spell alone.
5pm: dinner, a 'find it' game, a quiet settle on his mat.
8pm onwards: calm time, a final toilet trip, bed. Plus at least one unexplained burst of zoomies, usually just after you've sat down.
In between, sleep. Lots of it. A puppy this age needs most of the day asleep, and an overtired Labrador puppy is a bitey one.
A Labrador puppy probably isn't the right fit if:
nobody can be at home much for the first few months
you'd find sharp teeth, chewing and accidents very hard to live with
you want an instantly calm dog
the household can't agree on, and stick to, the same rules
The visitor
Month four. A friend arrives. He races to the door, ready to leap. You ask for a sit. He hesitates, quivering, his whole body wanting to jump, then sits, bottom vibrating. Your friend crouches down and he gets his fuss and a treat. It lasts four seconds before he springs up again. It's still the best four seconds of training you've seen.
Puppy behaviour: normal, or worth a vet visit?
Normal: hiccups, sleeping most of the day, sudden zoomies, mouthing everything, eating grass, whining in the crate for the first few nights, and a single act of total amnesia about his name in the park.
Worth a call to the vet: diarrhoea lasting more than a day or containing blood, repeated vomiting, refusing food, unusual tiredness, or a cough. Limping is worth special attention in a Labrador. Elbow and shoulder problems in large, fast-growing puppies often first show up between about five and twelve months, as a limp that comes and goes, or stiffness after rest. Early diagnosis makes a real difference.
What not to do when training a Labrador puppy
Don't shout or punish. It stresses him, damages trust and doesn't teach him what to do instead.
Don't play chase games or rough wrestling. They teach grabbing, jumping and running off, all of which a big Labrador will happily continue as an adult.
Don't let him practise bad habits. Every jump that gets a fuss and every counter raid that pays makes the habit stronger. Manage the situation while you train.
Don't overdo the treats. Use part of his daily food for training and keep tasty extras small, or the weight will creep on.
Don't over-exercise him. Young joints need gentle, self-paced play on soft ground, not long walks or endless ball chasing.
Protecting growing joints is one of the most important parts of puppyhood.
👉 HOW MUCH EXERCISE DOES A LABRADOR NEED? — Daily Routine, Age & Energy
How to train a Labrador puppy: putting it together
The aim is a confident, calm, well-mannered dog, and an owner who enjoys training him.
In the moment
Catch him doing something right, and reward it immediately.
When he's mouthy or wild, redirect to a toy or offer a nap.
Ask for one simple thing, such as a sit, before anything good happens.
Long term
Train little and often. Three to five minutes, several times a day, is far more effective than one long session.
Join a reward-based puppy class. A good class gives structure, socialisation and a trainer to ask. Many go on to Kennel Club Good Citizen awards or gundog, scentwork and obedience classes.
Agree the rules as a household. Same words, same rules, same rewards from everyone. Labradors notice inconsistency very quickly, and exploit it.
Teach 'leave it' early. For a breed that eats everything, it's one of the most important cues you'll ever teach.
Keep going through adolescence. The training you do between six months and two years is what makes the adult dog.
'Leave it' is the cue every Labrador owner ends up relying on.
👉 WHY DO LABRADORS EAT EVERYTHING? — Scavenging, Stealing & How to Stop It
The settle
Month ten. Sunday lunch at a pub garden. He walks in on a loose lead, lies down on his mat under the table and stays there through two courses, chin on his paws, watching the ducks. A child at the next table asks if she can stroke him. He sits for it, then lies back down. You quietly decide that every one of those 6am garden trips was worth it.
When to get help: if your puppy's biting seems frightened or aggressive rather than playful, if he's struggling badly with being left, or if training simply isn't progressing, ask your vet to rule out pain or illness, then find a qualified, reward-based trainer or behaviourist.
Are Labradors easier to train than other breeds?
Compared with most breeds, yes. Their food drive and willingness to work with people make them one of the easiest breeds to teach. Compared with Border Collies and Poodles, they're often less intense but more forgiving of beginner mistakes. Compared with independent breeds such as Dachshunds or many terriers, a Labrador is far more interested in what you want. The catch, compared with smaller breeds, is size: an untrained Labrador is a lot of dog to live with.
A well-trained Labrador is the family dog everyone pictures.
👉 ARE LABRADORS GOOD FAMILY DOGS? — Children, Energy & Everyday Life
What Labrador owners realise over time
Most owners find that the first year is the hardest and the most important. The house training, socialising, calm and 'leave it' you teach as a puppy become the habits of an easy-going adult. And the bond you build training him lasts for life.
The first night, a year on
A year after the first whimper in the crate. Bedtime. You say 'bed', and he walks into his crate by himself, turns round twice and lies down with a contented sigh. You close the door. Silence. By the time you've reached the stairs, he's snoring. The training worked. On both of you.
The verdict
How do you train a Labrador puppy? Start on day one with short, reward-based sessions, focus first on house training, socialisation, calm and handling, then build sit, settle, 'leave it', recall and loose-lead walking. Expect mouthing and a teenage wobble, and keep going through it.
Use his appetite, counted from his daily food, avoid punishment and protect his growing joints. A Labrador puppy is one of the most rewarding dogs to train. The effort you put in during the first two years comes back for the next ten.
If you're still getting to know the breed, the guide covers the full picture.
Living with a Labrador puppy means sharp teeth, broken nights and the best kind of chaos. The Labrador range is for people who'd do it all again.
👉 Explore Labrador women's t-shirts, unisex t-shirts and sweatshirts and hoodies
👉 or explore the full LABRADOR COLLECTION
Got a Labrador puppy who's mastered 'sit' and very little else? Show us. Tag @doggystylesinc on Instagram or find us on Facebook at Doggy Styles Inc, and your Labrador could feature in a future post.
Continue Understanding the Labrador Breed
FAQs
How do I train a Labrador puppy?
Start on day one with short, reward-based sessions. Focus first on house training, socialisation, calm and handling, then sit, settle, 'leave it', recall and loose-lead walking.
When should I start training my Labrador puppy?
The day he comes home. Puppies learn fast, and the early weeks are the best time for socialisation and house training.
How long does it take to house train a Labrador puppy?
Many are mostly reliable by four to six months with a consistent routine, though accidents can happen for a while after.
How do I stop my Labrador puppy biting?
Redirect to a toy, pause play if teeth meet skin, make sure he's getting enough sleep and provide plenty of safe chews.
Are Labradors easy to train?
Yes, they're among the most trainable breeds, thanks to their food drive and willingness to work with people. Consistency is the challenge.
How do I train my Labrador at home?
Use short sessions throughout the day, with food from his daily allowance as rewards. Practise in the house first, then the garden, then busier places.
How do I stop my Labrador puppy pulling on the lead?
Reward walking by your side, stop or change direction when the lead goes tight, and use a harness while he learns.
When do Labradors calm down?
Many settle noticeably between eighteen months and three years, especially with consistent training and enough exercise.
Should I crate train my Labrador puppy?
A crate or pen, introduced positively, helps with house training, safety and rest. It should never be used as punishment.
Is punishment-based training bad for Labradors?
Yes. Research links aversive methods with more stress and poorer welfare. Reward-based training is kinder and works well.
How much should I feed my Labrador puppy as treats?
Use part of his daily food for training and keep extra treats small, as Labradors gain weight very easily.
Why has my Labrador puppy forgotten his training?
Most go through a teenage phase between about six months and two years. Go back a step, raise rewards and stay consistent.
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