[Vickster]

My family decided that we would take on the task of raising a puppy. We got him this Saturday, September 1st, and it's been crazy with him. We all have fallen in love with him to the point where it stresses us out to leave him home alone. Right now he's 10 weeks old and not house trained. Honestly, we have no choice but to leave him home alone due to school and work. From 9-4 he will be home alone. I will be able to come and take care of him at lunch until he gets older and becomes more accustom to his new home. We bought an exercise pen and have put him in the kitchen where there is tile. He has a cardboard box with newspapers and he already knows to pee and poo there. We bought him a kong, chewtoys, a rope, and other toys. Will he be alright if left alone? Another issue would be the night time. He barks and cries all the time. Usually it's because he has pooed or peed in his area and wants attention but now he just barks because some of our family members give in and go give him attention. We just ordered a crate from him and it will be coming this Thursday. We will start crate training him as soon as the crate has arrived.
Will he be used to staying home alone as time goes on? Oh, during my lunch break I plan to take him on a walk and clean up whatever mess he had made.
Should we just completely ignore his barking? We never know when we should go check up on him because now he takes advantage of the fact that his barking would lead us to check up on his pee/poo area..
Thanks so much.

 

[CptJack]

My family decided that we would take on the task of raising a puppy. We got him this Saturday, September 1st, and it's been crazy with him. We all have fallen in love with him to the point where it stresses us out to leave him home alone. Right now he's 10 weeks old and not house trained. Honestly, we have no choice but to leave him home alone due to school and work. From 9-4 he will be home alone. I will be able to come and take care of him at lunch until he gets older and becomes more accustom to his new home. We bought an exercise pen and have put him in the kitchen where there is tile. He has a cardboard box with newspapers and he already knows to pee and poo there. We bought him a kong, chewtoys, a rope, and other toys. Will he be alright if left alone? Another issue would be the night time. He barks and cries all the time. Usually it's because he has pooed or peed in his area and wants attention but now he just barks because some of our family members give in and go give him attention. We just ordered a crate from him and it will be coming this Thursday. We will start crate training him as soon as the crate has arrived.
Will he be used to staying home alone as time goes on? Oh, during my lunch break I plan to take him on a walk and clean up whatever mess he had made.
Should we just completely ignore his barking? We never know when we should go check up on him because now he takes advantage of the fact that his barking would lead us to check up on his pee/poo area..
Thanks so much.

Leaving him alone during the day, with a break for lunch will be fine.

At night, he NEEDS you to get up and take him out. Unless you want to paper train, rather than housetrain him - get him a regular crate and take him outside when he whines or barks at night. Yes, you're going to lose sleep, but the dog being accostomed to sleeping with his mess and not having those requests to be cleaned up /taken out is going to be a problem in the long haul. For right now, during hte day, it's a 'must' - but once he's able to hold it for four hours (another month at this age, probably) he should be in a crate or NOT encouraged to go in his area then, too.

 

[hanksimon]

Both of these free books will help: http://www.dogstardaily.com/free-downloads

 

[DaisysPetShop]

I agree with everything above. We had the same problems with daisy, we found that crate training really helped! she stayed there from 9 - 12 then 12 til 1 I'd come home and take her for a good run. You'll see that keeping them regularly exercise will soon exhaust and separation anxiety. The main thing to remember is these are pack animals, after a few more weeks a month you'll have forgotten about this and have a happy puppy.

 

[wmech]

We always got our dogs a crate that was just big enough to lay down in. I would say most dogs don't want to lay in pee so they eventually would cry when they needed to go, and then eventually they held it until the morning. Now they don't need the crate.