Freedom

without a crate it took my dog 2 years. sorry, i know that doesnt help at all, i just wanted to say good luck, im sure he will enjoy it and do just fine! im betting he will still just spend most of the night in his crate anyway.

good luck.

i have been trying to get our dogs some somewhat unsupervised time out of the crate too. i have been off work all week. i tried to get my wife to leave the dogs in the bedroom with me, with the gate up, when she left for work. she did it one day but was super paranoid about it.

the dogs were fine that day. i knew they would be. actually, one of them slept on the bed with me until i got up and the other one slept in front of the bathroom door until i got up. i am not too worried about amelia destroying stuff. sydney on the other hand.... he is really good about only chewing his toys unless he is "mad" at us.

the other day, my wife and i were both in the office working on something (i forget what now). sydney kept trying to get us to go into the living room. finally my wife went in there just in time to catch him sitting amongst the stuffing he had just pulled out of one of the couch pillows. first time he had done anything like that in months. hasnt tried anything like that since either.

Boy, it really varies. Russell started sleeping anywhere in the bedroom he wanted as soon as he was housetrained (around 5 months). I was able to leave him home alone all day by the time he was 11 months. We tested him the way you're doing, by puppy-proofing with safe "traps" to judge his behavior by. I don't know if it's strictly accurate but I've read that dogs will typically do all the destruction they're going to do in the first 20 minutes of being left alone... so if they make it through those 20 minutes you're probably home free. It can't hurt to do a puppy-proofed trial run, you can always step backwards again.

I got lucky.  I was sort of forced into leaving the pup out of the crate all day.
We dogsat a friend's Boxer who promised me his dog had no problems with cats.
Wrong!!!!  That dog tried to kill my cats.  So I had no choice but to crate the Boxer and leave Sampson out all night. I got up once to see if he needed to go potty.  The next day I had to go to work so we used the same arrangements with no problems.  Let it be said, due to my work skd the pup is only alone for 4 hrs max.  I never sectioned him off just full blown freedom.  He was 7 months at the time and has had free reign of the house since. He's now 9 months.
He is a heavy chewer but only his toys...thank goodness.

Madi was crated nightly for atleast a year and around a year and 1/2 while I was at work.  Madi and Baby really never had any problems together.  She has hissed one time in her life, the first time Madi walked in the house. After that Baby ruled the house.  Good luck.  The first year is hard.  It does get easier.  Wear them out as much as possible.  This is the trick!  It is not their fault, they just have no attention span.  Best to you and your kid!

Thanks, everyone. 
 
I feel pretty safe in general because Ben hasn't shredded/chewed anything that wasn't his in several months, but I don't want to be too complacent about it.  I will let this stage go on for a while and then start testing him "loose" while I run tiny errands, like popping to the shop for milk.  To be fair it's not really the nights I am concerned about, exactly - it's the early mornings, before we wake up.  I hate to admit this, but I honestly have no idea what time Ben wakes up in the morning.  One of us is always up by 7-8 am, and Ben is awake then, but that's as much as I know.
 
Kate

Buddy slept in his crate in my bedroom from the time I brought him home, till about 6mo.  Buddy would get me up an hour or two before my alarm would go off to go outside.  I did the whole no talking, outside, inside, back in crate, me back to bed.  I don't know quite when it happened, but soon I was not putting him back into the cage and let him get into bed with me.  He would sleep there until I got up, no problems.  Soon, he started sleeping with me the whole night, but occasionally he would get up in the morning and without letting me know he had to go (as he did during his waking hours), he would pee on the floor.  So, I learned that as soon as he was off the bed, I got up and took him out.  It progressed to him getting up and letting me know, going outside, coming back in and making sure he got back into bed with me because I was very unsure of him being on his own in the house.  Now, both of us are at the point where he gets out of bed, sits at the front door and cries (apartment dwellers), I get up and take him out and then go back to bed.  If he appears that he wants to stay up, I leave a light on for him and go back to bed.  Sometimes he will stay up, or come back to bed with me, sometimes he does both.  It has worked out well for us.  He hasn't done any destructive chewing in a long while.  I don't know if it is because he is growing out of it (Buddy is also 8mo. as of 12/21) or I have just removed all temptation.  I have a feeling it is a little of both.  I do leave things out on my side tables, but he also has many bones and balls (both his favorites) on the floor at all times. So, he can amuse himself for awhile.  I can't block Buddy into my kitchen because he jumps the 3ft. tall gate I have for him.  Yep, I have an Evil Kneivel dog.  So, during the day he is crated, which kinda explains why I let him sleep out of his crate so early in his life.  Guilt. 
 
Good luck!  I am sure that this hasn't helped much with advice [&:]
 
Sue

Bugsy now going on 17 months old doesn't sleep if we don't lock his crate.  Just tried again the other night and as soon as he heard DH get up in the morning he flew out (interestingly he didn't leave earlier) and was so exhausted he fell right to sleep and was shattered all day long.  So I locked his crate up the next night and he gave the contented sigh we have come to love.
In the past if I left it open or closed but not locked he would run out extremely agitated and looking at me like - goodness mom have you lost your mind!
So as much as I would like to keep his crate open it gets locked.
We used to lock him in there because to restrict his 'exploration' but I'm sure he would have been fine by the time he was 10 months or so.
We did stay in a B&B that allowed dogs when he was 11 mos old and didn't have a crate.  It was very cute as he must have woken up for every little creak in the floorboards and each time he would run over to me and lick me, then run over to DH and lick him and then drop all 90+lbs on the floor with a thud.  I felt bad for the people underneath our room []