Lola is 6 months and she has free roam of the house, we gave her free roam about a month ago when she stopped going to the bathroom when we weren't home. She is alone about 5 hrs M-F while I am at work and she has not had an accident once. I believe all she does while we are gone is stare out the window or sleep. She has never chewed anything or torn anything up either. My husband is a driver and drives by the house several times a day and says she is always laying up in the window. (We live on the second floor of a two family house and the back of the couch is even with the window, you can't even see her in the window unless you are looking for her) We have also trained her not to bark (the only time she does is when we are home and she hears someone at the door, I think she feels the need to "protect" us
)
We have had Milo for 3 weeks now and he just graduated from his crate to the bathroom. He still has his crate in there, a pee pad and some toys. It has only been 2 days but he is doing good so far, goes on the pee pad while we are gone. Once he starts holding it while we are gone we will also give him more space to roam.
For DH and I, we let our pups earn the space they have. If Lola all of a sudden started having a ton of accidents or got into a lot of trouble while we were gone we would restrict her space again. But she has been very well behaved and we have not had any problems yet. It was the same with Kiwi, He had free roam at about 6 months as well(but his situation was a little different, he managed to "break out" of every space we tried to restrict him to so we eventually gave up..lol) and once he had free roam he never had any accidents either.
But again, I think every pup, every home and every situation is different so you need to find what works best with your family, good luck!
