I think you can safely put him in a crate for5 hours and he should be ok. You need to make sure he has no food or water in the crate with him, so that he does not have to go potty earlier than when you come home. The inside of the crate needs to be really really really small, so you may have to block off some of it to make it small enough. He should have only enough space to turn around and lay down. You can put a kong in there or some other toy, but he will sleep most of the time while he is in there anyway.
However, if you want to keep him out then I would definitely make the space smaller than the size of your kitchen. You need to make the space small enough that he has a sleeping area, his food and water (but not necessary) and his place to go potty. There should not be any other room in there. He should only have one area available to potty and that is the area that you have the potty pad. All other space should be covered by his bed/crate and food area. In this way you are making an environment for him to be successful. If there is only one free open space to potty, (the potty pad) then that is where he will go. If you make to much area available, then you have created an opportunity for him to potty in NOT the right area.
However, I potty trained Millie by keeping her in the crate all day while we were at work. She was able to hold it and she did not have any mistakes in the crate, but we did have it very very very small. When we came home, and I mean as soon as we got there, we took her for a very long walk and that gave her a chance to pee a couple of times and do her poo. Then we played with her to get out her energy from being couped up in the crate all day. After a while we trusted her to hold her pee while at work and we put her in a larger space, but still confined. We had an x-pen with her crate (door open) a bed and some toys, still no food or water. As time passed and she was trusted to not mess in the house, she eventually had free range of the house and still does when we are at work.
Before work, and when we got up from sleep, we would feed her and give her access to water. After we had gotten ready for work, we would take her for a 15 minute walk to allow her an opportunity to pee and poo before she was put in the crate.
Of course while we were at home, she had free access to her food and water. But not free access to the whole house. She was either in her crate, x-pen or in one room at a time and that was the room we were in watching her constantly. |