yeah, we've done the gate thing... she just directs her anger out on the gates, and has completely chewed through the woodwork on one of the gates, thereby allowing her to jump the lower gate (we'd stack 2 gates vertically for a height of about 50 inches). We're getting a metal gate.

As for the barking, we ignore her if she's whining / whimpering / barking out of loneliness.


update: we've had a chance to do "mock" leaves, and have worked up to 20 minutes pretty quickly (a week). Our behavior psych. said that after 30 minutes, then we can progress much more quickly for a benchmark of 1 or 2 hours.