Loki still had accidents until about 10-12 months. BUT - he's now on medication for incontinence and has some other issues that made it difficult, especially when he had to pee every 20 minutes. But he's now completely trained. It just took a LOT of consistency. We didn't stress about the hard stuff, like standing in the rain or letting him out at night. He will probably always need a trip out in the middle of the night and that's OK, but basically as long as he tells me that he needs to go out, I'm happy. Even if it's every 30 mins.
He has been fully crate trained since he was about 6 months old. I can leave him in his crate for 4-5 hours without worrying about him having an accident. He's not crated a whole lot, maybe a few hours in the evening when we run errands and sometimes on the weekends if we go shopping. But it's nice that I don't have to worry about coming home to a mess. I think a dog without "issues" could go 6-8 hours with the same results, once they are trained and old enough. (He's almost 2) The side effect of crating is, of course, a hyper dog when you get home. We go for long walks and do doggie daycare when necessary
