We've had 6 month old Nikko for 2 weeks now and while he's a very sweet dog, he's driving us insane with the barking and crying. We know that he's probably still feeling out of his element as he was used to being surrounded by a group of Yorkies at the breeder's house, so we're being patient with him BUT we don't know what exactly to do to help him.
He's getting better at night. He sleeps in a playpen with his bed (which he loves), one of our old t-shirts, a puppy dog with a warmer inside(that used to have a heartbeat until the battery died-need to replace that!), his water bowl and a pee pad. We put him to bed after he's fallen alseep on one of our laps and he'll wake up and bark anywhere from 2-30 minutes, but he will eventually go to sleep. Sometimes he wakes up and barks in the middle of the night, but he'll go back to sleep within 2mins to an hour usually-that's when it gets kinda rough!
The biggest problem is when we're home during the day. The puppy is confined to the kitchen because he's only using his pee pads about 50% of the time and he's not happy unless we're in there with him. He's SLOWLY getting better, but usually he'll cry, then bark, then wail and howl (making noises like we're torturing him) if we go upstairs to do something. Even when we're in the next room (which he can easily see into with the open floor plan and see through gate) he'll throw a fit. It's impossible to do anything around the house and maintain your sanity with him carrying on! He even barked like mad when I tried to fold laundry in the living room with him right next to me in his playpen.
When we go out he's in his crate (after he broke out of his playpen a few times) and of course he cries and barks the second we put him in it. We've even returned home hours later to him still barking (although this isn't always, he does fall asleep at times). From what I've read, he appears to have separation anxiety and we're not finding a lot of helpful information on how to help him overcome it. We have gathered that we shouldn't try to just make him stop barking (he really doesn't bark at all aside from when we aren't right next to him) but we don't know what we can do. We definitely don't want to encourage this behavior, as it's driving us both a bit crazy!
