Oh come on guys, open up about crates. Seriously when I read lots of posts here, I feel like I am an evil person for crating my dog in a crate 10 times his size when I can't watch him.
It's not always easy to have a puppy proof room. I don't have one. I could use the bathroom but it's so tiny that the space the dog could have would be maybe twice the size of the crate... Plus with the door closed, it's worse for dogs, at least in a crate they can look around. So, I make do with the best I have, which is a room where all the electrical cables are hidden under wood panels, but there are still shelves and chairs they can chew, and if I left a puppy here too long he would probably be able to go under the wood panels to play with the computer cables. So, I'm sorry but in my case it's much safer to leave a pup in the crate, until I am 100% sure that he won't go after the furniture and the wood panels.
When Boris was little, here is a list of what Boris managed to do when he wasn't crated - climb on the desk, steal random objects from the desk (tissues, computer mouse), eating my computer headphone, chewing the shelves, move the wood panels covering the cables, pull on the curtains... And that's in my best puppy proof house (I did remove the curtains eventually though), and I was with him. The kitchen is full of spaces Tips could fit in to go behind the stove, fridge etc (I hate the kitchen, but can't afford to change it at the moment). The living room and the bedroom both have cables that we can't hide as well. So it's not like we have a choice.
Also, I'm totally against encouraging a pup to see in the house, which is what I would do if I let the pups in the room at night, until they are housebroken. I fail to see the point of preventing the pup from peeing on the floor all day to let him free to do it at night. With all the people against crates, I have yet to find any argument for that, and training a dog to pee on newspapers or pads is unacceptable to me - in the crate, I know they won't pee.
In a perfect world we would all have wonderful houses with rooms easy to puppy proof. But it's not a perfect world, and some people just don't have the choice but to use a crate, for the safety of the pup. I really don't care about the furniture that much, but I don't want my pups to swallow matress fillings, or chew on cables. Once the dogs are old enough that I know they won't do such things, I will stop putting them in the crate. Until then, it's just the safest place I have for them.
So I'm sorry that for some of you, just because I have a not-so-great house, I am not good owner for my dogs.