YOYO Alone For The First Time

It's the end of the week, and tonight we plan to attend a friend's birthday dinner at Agave Grill. Kristy and I haven't left YOYO alone for a long period of time, so this will be his first. We've trained him well up to this point to go into his crate on his own. He usually doesn't stay in there for too long though. When it came time and we had to leave, we put him in his crate and stood around a corner to show no presence of ourselves. After a few seconds, he started to whimper. Of course, we knew he was trying to gain our attention and call us to come let him and play. But, we let him whimper and bark a bit more. A few minutes have gone by, and he continues to make a lot of noise. There wasn't much we could do. We made out way out, and stood at the door for a good few minutes. It just so happens that we bumped into one of our neighbours who just finished walking his dogs. We asked him "what should we do?" He told us that we just need to leave him. And so we did. After standing outside our place for 20 minutes, he stopped whimpering and barking. We left for a good 2-2.5 hours. When we got back, YOYO was quietly waiting for us in his crate and didn't make a since sound when we walked in. Success!