How to Transition from Crate to Freedom?

Hi,

This is a training issue I have been dealing with for my 6 year old toy poodle, who I adopted 3 months ago.  He was always crated and so never learned to live in a house.  I am an advocate of crate training for help in housetraining a dog, but once the dog is old enough and trained enough to be reliable and SAFE in the house, I do not use a crate.  This is how my dogs have always been trained.  It's a personal decision and philosophy. 

Anyway, the way that I have been teaching this 6 year old how to live in a house and to reinforce his housetraining is I have slowly given him access to our house, one room at a time, while I am home.  When I am out, he is in his crate.  First, I gated him in the kitchen and kept a good eye on him.  When I thought he needed to pee/poo, I'd lead him to the door to the yard, say the word "outside" and out we'd go.  If he peed or pooed, then he got heaps of praise and a treat.  After a couple of weeks, I added another room to his access and did the same thing, and on and on it's gone.  He now has fulll access to all rooms of the house and is asking for the door.  I suspect your little guy knows he's not supposed to go in the house, but needs to learn how to independently decide it's time to go to the door.  Over crated dogs, I think, lose the ability to make that decision on their own, as it's always made for them. 

For our Pom, we started by gating him in a bathroom, then we gated off the stairs so he can't get to the carpeted areas.  Until he was about a year old or so, he would have a couple of accidents a month if I came home later than usual.  Try to make sure that there's nothing dangerous lying around, like wires he could trip over, or plants that he might eat.  I would be more worried about him getting himself in trouble than messing up in the house.  Afterall, if he does have accidents regularly, you can just go back to the crate.

On the other hand, I dont think I would ever trust our GSD enough to leave him alone in the house uncrated during the day. 

Do you really want to?  Now just think a minute.  Your dog has a crate that is large enough and comfortable enough to stay in for whatever period is needed.
 
OH NO  there is a fire while you are at work.  Your dog is running free,  He runs to the "safest" area (the back of your basement behind the washer and dryer or any other hiding place).  Oops survival options go down.
 
OH NO there is a fire.  Your dog is crated in the bedroom with a fire alert sticker on the window.  Fireman goes there first.  Sees dog picks up crate (or gets some help for a big crate)  Dog is saved first.
 
Same scenerio for other emergencies.  Unless it is  critical (severe seperation anxiety etc)  Consider leaving them crated.  There are many situations in which being in a crate are actually a good idea.  If you dont want to crate, consider restricting to a single identified room.

I'm new here and have a similar problem.  We have a 1 year old lab that has been crate trained.  She has never done her business in the house.  Not even when she was a little puppy.  Also, she never chews anything she's not supposed to when we're home.  Only her toys.  When we're home she's just an angel, well behaved and as perfect as can be.  However, about 5 months ago we decided that we'd slowly let her roam around the house while we're away from home.  About 3 days passed and she was fine.  Then suddenly we come home and a small doormat was chewed up into a million pieces.  Great.  We remove the doormat and try again the next day.  Same thing but she ends up chewing the doormat at the back door.  We remove that doormat and try again the next day and she ends up chewing a hallway rug.  The thing that really upsets me is that she doesn't chew it at all when we're home!  I'll even leave out the chewed up rug to see if she'll touch it while were home so i can catch her in the act and discipline, and nothing.  Perfect angel.  At first we thought it was the mailman making her go crazy.  So, we purchased a webcam and we watched her from work.  About 10 minutes after my wife leaves the house she starts going at the rug.  So i call up the answering machine at home and yell at her through the phone.  My co-workers were all staring at me funny when all they could hear from my cubicle was the words "OFF!!!!" several times really loudly while i stare at my computer screen.  The lack of toys is not a problem.  She has about 7 of them all around the house.  For some reason she chews the carpet while we're gone.  As a result, for the last 5 months we've decided to put her back into her crate and figured that maybe it was a phase that she'll grow out of eventually.  We're ready to try again but figured we'd ask the experts how to go about doing this so that she doesn't eat our rugs again.  Anyone have any advice?