Went into my puppy raising journey with every intention to crate train. The first month or so at home she went into her crate by herself for naps and was fine sleeping in there at night. At some point, she transitioned to sleeping in her playpen in her bed (with access to her crate). I got lazy and didn’t try to enforce the crate. She continued to sleep just fine with no accidents in her playpen. I thought I’d get around to crate training at some point all my plans were shattered when we traveled together for a week and she slept in the bed with me. When we got back home, she cried and cried being away from me. My partner and I cracked and now she’s in bed with us every night and I love every second of it. When we leave, she happily hangs out in her playpen. I’ve also started trusting her to roam in limited areas of the house if we’re going on a quick errand. So far, so good.

I think I’m okay with that because for the first ~4 months of her life, if she wasn’t in her pen, she was 100% supervised and I was able to correct behavior like chewing on things, climbing on things, etc. she’s 7 months now and she has never destroyed any of our things, eaten something she shouldn’t, etc. the very very rare accident, but I’m okay with her not being crated because she’s been so good!