house breaking 3-year corgi

Hi guys. I recently posted about adopting a 3-year welsh corgi. here's the link for more info...http://forum.dog.com/asp/tm.asp?m=208679
anyway, my mom will have the dog but she works 5am-3pm. I'm wondering how the dog will do being alone that long. She was in a kennel, possibly a little paper trained at most, and i'm wondering how difficult it will be to train her to be house broken. Should we keep her in a crate from 5-3, that seems pretty "mean" to me but I'm not a dog expert. thanks guys.