Coke and Kenya aren't crated at night. We have three dog beds in our room for them. When we got Coke, we figured we'd crate him for the night for a while b/c his foster family said he was crated and we didn't want too many changes too soon. The first night, he screeched and whined so we caved. He's been in our room (but not on our bed) ever since.
This summer, we are going away for 2 weeks like we do each summer. Last summer we only had Kenya, and since she really doesn't care about anything, this wasn't an issue. The problem is the dogs will HAVE to be crated at night, and whether they will be crated near us still remains to be seen. The cottage is small and DH and I will not get an actual room. The possibilities are we will either sleep out back in our tent, or we will sleep on a pull-out couch bed in the living room. The dogs will either be crated in a tent, crated in the basement, or crated in the garage. My aunt is allergic to dogs, so during the day they will be outdoors with us. At night, they cannot be roaming free b/c of her allergies, and b/c Coke will run out the door any chance he gets. It's not fair to put the burden of always closing and latching every door on other people. There are little kids around and they aren't reliable with that. Most of the time we don't even shut the doors.
So we figure we need to start getting Coke used to different things so he can be more like Kenya, who will settle in regardless of where she is "put" (shut in a room, crated, free roaming, dog bed in our bedroom, on our bed....doesn't matter to her). I'm not sure how to go about it since I've never crate trained a dog. Do I just "break" him my sticking him in there and letting him cry? He is crated for periods of time during the day, but it's different when he *knows* that people are home.