Puppies - normal to feel you're not doing it all properly?

[Heyheyheygoodbye]

My 9 week old lab puppy Sam is divine. He's responding well to training and apart from the usual puppy joy in destruction etc he's much easier to look after than I thought he would be.

I just feel like I'm not doing everything I should be. Between training, crating, getting him used to a collar, making sure his interactions with the cats are slow and calm and controlled, getting him out to the toilet as often as possible, encouraging him to eat because he's the world's only picky Labrador, socialisation so he doesn't end up afraid of everything...it never ends!

I knew it would be hard work and I don't resent it, it's more that I look at him and think, 'Am I doing it right? Am I giving you the best chance? Am I giving you everything you need?' And then I run back to my puppy book or frantically start googling to see if I'm screwing him up for life.

It's hard!

Morning heyhey yes completely normal well certainly for me. The fact that you are worrying means you are trying to do your very best by him.
My top tip would be to think of the things that really matter to you in terms of manners you would expect from your dog and implement these right away. For us number 1 was pup not bolting through doors and gates desperate to get out we wanted him to sit nice and wait until we had walked through them told him to come. This was surprisingly easy to train. We are also working on being able to put bowls of nibbles out when we have guests over and pup leave them this is proving more difficult.
There is a set of Ebooks by Beverley Courtney that I can't recommend enough first one is free and at the end of that there is a link to get the second one for free so well worth having a look.
Also we always try to be more exciting to the pup than the cat so lots of tasty treats or nice game of tuggy or fetch when cat is around this gave our cat plenty of chances to see pup without pup being desperate to get to him.
With regard to socialisation take pup everywhere you can always have treats if pup is showing he a bit wary of something - nice soothing voice and distract with treats and they soon don't seem so wary. I am completely no expert but I'm surprised just how quickly pup is catching onto most things with just a few short training sessions throughout each day.
Hope this helps and relax and enjoy him being so small I feel like ours has doubled in size in the time we have had him

Daft thank you so much! That is great advice. We talked about our priorities and how they fit in with what we are training: ultimately the priorities for us are don't bite, don't jump, don't shout, and come when I call you. These are all things we are already starting to train - in any steps! - so thanks for that :)

It's really hot here today so I got the paddling pool out for puppy. He loves it!!

You are welcome heyhey I missed a trick with the paddling pool today kids and pup would have loved that hopefully tomorrow 😀