Danke, who is now 8 months old, has earned her way out of the crate while we are gone!

After being left alone upstairs for 3 hours, my husband came home to find her laying in her open crate. The only thing she got into in his absence, was the laundry. She pulled out one of my work t-shirts and had drug it into her crate with her like a security blanket.

I'm suprised she didn't shred the shirt. I guess my little girl is growing up.

That's great! I can only hope this will happen with Enoch. He'll turn 7 months tomorrow and I just don't see it happening anytime soon. Well...if he's tired maybe. It's so true a tired puppy is a good puppy.

I probably will never get to the point that Danke can be out for more than a few hours unsupervised.

Eventually she'd get bored and get into trouble. But, we're lucky in that, the house is rarely vacant for more than a few hours at a time.

Even if I could leave her out 24/7, I wouldn't, just because I think crate time is so beneficial.

YAY for you!! and Danke! If my memory serves me correctly and God knows it has seen better days; one of the things that precipitated first heat of any of my childhood girl pups was frequent urination and restlessness (shredded shirt for sure) . My father always kept them confined until after the first heat. I'm not sure if that has any relevence, since I've only raised the boys but it did come to mind when I read your post so I thought I'd pass it on.

Mine's 8 months also. I haven't had the balls to leave him unsupervised in the house yet, but he does tone it down quite a bit when he's inside. I've been working with him quite a bit in the house lately because winter's coming and I don't want to put him outside or in the crate every time I can't keep my eye on him.

He likes to chew on the wood steps in the garage still, so I'm concerned he might do it in the house also. I gotta get one of my surveillance cams pointed at the steps so I can give him a zap when he chomps on them. That stopped his door scratching in about 5 minutes.

Congrats!!! I rarely get to this point with my working dogs. I don't even know if I COULD. Usually I don't venture beyond the stage where they are simply trustworthy in the house when I am there. Crates are a permanent fixture in this place!

Congrats!! Good feeling, huh? Beware though, it seems they like to regress back to being naughty once in awhile. Sampson who is 15 months now was doing really well then "poof" he starting to counter surfing, get stuff out of the garbage when I'm not looking and its funny I'm starting to find stuff in his crate that he takes and puts in there (shoes, socks, water bottle, etc.) When I cant find something I go look there now-LOL
Must be the terrible two's or three's or something

Gotta love em!!! By the way, your girl is beautiful!!!

I guess I just do a really good job of keeping her tired (which also keeps ME tired, LOL).

We used to get up early in the morning so I could lay and run tracks with her, but now that school is back in session, my tracking field isn't available in the mornings, so we're doing OB and bitework in the morn, and tracking at night.

She gets probably two hours of exercise (mental and physical) before I leave the house in the morning.
Then she capers around with my 4 year old in the yard (read: chases him on his PowerWheels Truck) after my son eats breakfast.

So, she's pretty well worked in the morning.

Both times she's been left out of her crate have been inadvertant mistakes on my husband's part. She lays in her crate with the door open, and sometimes it get's bumped closed. In the hubub of trying to get the four year old to daycare, he glanced over and it looked like she was already crated, so he left.

After the first time, we let her sleep on a mat in our room.
This is the second time, and we'll start leaving her out for short periods, and see how it goes.

If she screws up, it's too easy to put her back in the crate.