Our means of dog confinement range from a crate, to an expen, to two baby gates. Overnight he's in his crate. I like having him crate trained because he needs to be crated in the car, if he ever had to be boarded or stay overnight at the vet, etc... It's a safe, small, quiet place that he's comfortable in. However, I don't want him crated the ENTIRE time we can't supervise him because my husband and I work full time jobs, so when we're at work, he's in an expen. In fact, he started with the crate in the expen, then we kept making it smaller, then transitioned him to just the crate, and have the expen just for day time. Then starts the baby gates -- there's one keeping him JUST in the family room, which we can swing in the other direction and put up the second baby gate and he's confined to the family room and kitchen. He only has (supervised) free run of downstairs a little bit every day, and only after he's just gone potty outside. If he is going to be unsupervised for more than a couple minutes (like running downstairs to change over the laundry, or running upstairs to grab something), he gets put in his expen.
Our pup is 5 months old now and has been doing great with housetraining. He just started consistently asking to go out about two weeks ago, and can hold it overnight in his crate with no accidents. I still feel a little weird by having an animal in a cage (even part time) because I've always had cats, but it keeps him safe, and keeps my house from getting destroyed when we can't watch him!
Our pup is 5 months old now and has been doing great with housetraining. He just started consistently asking to go out about two weeks ago, and can hold it overnight in his crate with no accidents. I still feel a little weird by having an animal in a cage (even part time) because I've always had cats, but it keeps him safe, and keeps my house from getting destroyed when we can't watch him!
