It depends on the dog.. Some dogs are GREAT in the crate, and some absolutely hate it. My Zoey hates it.. no matter what we would do.. all the crate training techniques and things we did to make the crate a 'good' place didn't work. To this day if she even so much as has to sit next to her crate she will start to drool... When we would leave her in her crate she would freak. We'd come back to her sopping wet, everywhere but her back.. just drenched in drool.. there would be pieces of toenail broken off and laying several feet away from her crate, and her crate (the plastic kind) has chew and scratch marks ingrained on every inch of the inside. So.. yea.. crates aren't for every dog. Zoey is left out to roam the house now when we are gone and she does perfectly. Maggie is still crated.. she doesn't have problems with it.. not yet anyway.. But we only just got her and she's a baby.. so I don't know how she will be when she is older.
You can use an Xpen for adult dogs just fine, just make sure it's tall enough that she won't jump out. We don't leave our dogs in the Xpen when we are gone, but if we just need to contain them for a minute somewhere where we can still see them they go in it. Our Xpen opens up so it can be used as a fence also, so sometimes we use it to fence off the dining room from the living room.. it would take about three baby gates hooked together to do that
You can use an Xpen for adult dogs just fine, just make sure it's tall enough that she won't jump out. We don't leave our dogs in the Xpen when we are gone, but if we just need to contain them for a minute somewhere where we can still see them they go in it. Our Xpen opens up so it can be used as a fence also, so sometimes we use it to fence off the dining room from the living room.. it would take about three baby gates hooked together to do that