Day 3: Barking problem

Today is the third day since I bring puppy home. At 11:45PM, I am eating my breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's really hard to take care of puppy alone. Every time I leave Jim alone, he will bark. I stayed in a condominium. In Malaysia, all condominium does not allow pet. In my condo, as long as your pet didn't cause any nuisance to the neighbors, they are quite flexible.

How to train him to be alone? I asked a lot of experts and all of them gave me different advices. All of them said the same thing. I am a sucker! I gave in too much. The puppy is training me and I am not training the puppy. Below are the methods I consider:

1) Ignore the bark. After a while, the puppy will realise that no one is attending to the bark. He will understand that barking does not gave him anything. I tried that for 30 mins, I received a phone call from the management asking me to remove the pet. I am so depress. At the end, I gave in to the bark and I am sure it will make the situation worse.

2) Slowly let him get use to his lonely time. This is a very time consuming process. I need to do it slowly. So far, I managed to get away for 60 seconds only. Sometimes it's even shorter. The result is not good enough. I have taken 3 days holiday and I don't have many holidays to do this. I need to know if this will work.

3) Some people advise me to debark. I find it really hard to accept this. I am more like 95% NO and 5% YES. Like he said, it is better than you abandon him. I am really hoping that I don't have to do it.

4) Show him who is your pack leader. I do believe that Pepper (my dog) either thinks he is the leader or he is confuse about the leader. I need to do what I consider cruel to subdue him and show him who is the leader. I really hate to do this because I feel that is Inhumane but I have to understand that they are canine and they have their own rules. If I want this to work, this us probably the best option.

I will give option 2 and 4 a try and see how it goes. Stay tuned!