This is the exact set-up I use when I am away from Tucker. It works great. You can get these cages from petco or petsmart. I put his crate in this cage. :) Good Luck!

Good luck in your new job. I know that Chewey will be fine. I dont crate Gucci but when we need to live her home alone we use a baby gate to enclosed her in a particular area. I put there her bed, toys, pee pad, food and water. She sleeps most of the time.

Marie- I think Tino and Bunny are just like Gucci! I know that all they do is sleep all day! When I come home, they are always just waking up and getting out of their beds!

I was such a nervous wreck leaving my babies at home. I put them in the kitchen and close the door so they can't get out. They have their food, water and pee pads in there. ***secret*** I would call the house and talk to them on the answering machine since it was in the kitchen! :wub: I know, it's embarassing to admit! :rolleyes:

Awwwwww! I think that's cute!

I use to stress alot when leaving my babies home alone. I found a website that sold security cameras and bought 3. I have one in the bedroom(i activate it when I'm leaving or going to work) and one infront of the house and in the backyard. I thought it was really expensive at first but I figured not only do they give me lasting security but when I play the tapes back, I find out what my babies were doing the whole time I was out. I highly recommend it! If you guys are interested, the website's address is http://www.webelectronics.biz/ I saw some cheap cameras at fry's electronics but they weren't proffesional grade cameras. They get broken after a couple of weeks.

Thanks Marie, but i decided to stay home with my son this summer. i want to do a bunch of things with him, and truth be told, I'm not ready to leave Chewy yet
:) I will be returning to work come the new school year and you will hear about my neurosis again then!!!

He-He...sounds like something I would do!!!..if I could, my bf needs to start making better money...lol

Cocoa and Chloe have free run of the house. We believe they sleep while we're gone.

Zeus and Perseus allow us to stay at their house. They have free run of our house with the exception of our teenager's bedroom -- way too much to get into in there. We gate that area off before we leave. They have stairs to get on and off the couch and their king size bed they allow us to sleep in at night. They have two doggy beds on the couch they love to lay in and look outside. They also have a large Kong "couch" on the floor they love to lay on in the sun. Zeus has had free run for 3 1/2 years, and he and Perseus have free run together for 2 1/2 years. We have all cords put up and have never had any problems. As others have already said, we believe they sleep most of the day. Sometimes they don't even hear the garage door going up, other times they do and greet us at the door. They live in the lap of luxury and WILL NOT go into a crate (they are both terrified of crates and start shaking at the sight of them) -- not even to ride in the car or go to the vet. That is perfectly fine with me, because I made the decision that if I had to keep a dog in a tiny crate, I didn't want one in the first place. I am one of those weird people who do not agree with crates. We did put Perseus in an ex-pen when we first got him, because the vet said don't upset Zeus by ruining his routine. Perseus learned real quick that if he pottied on the pad like Zeus, he didn't have to stay in "jail." We called the ex-pen the hoosegow. We could say get into your hoosegow, and poor Perseus would readily climb in. He only stayed in there about 3 weeks and was potty trained. An ex-pen is much better than a crate, since they have so much more room to move. I've attached a picture of my sweet little Perseus in his hoosegow. You can't see the whole thing, but he sure hated being confined. Much happier with freedom.

Awww Love it.

If you can call it that, we crate-trained our late senior, Katy, when she was a pup. She had been pee-pad and grass trained before we picked her up. I don't recall that we ever had to close the door to her crate. The breeder gave us a blanket that had been in her puppy playpen. We kept the blanket in the crate.

When Katy was older, we bought a few oversized soft sided crates. They were large enough to hold her little fleece beds. We never closed the doors. Once or twice a day she would wander in to one or the other and take a snooze. I thought of these as her space.

Her original crate was good sized. My niece has commandeered that crate for her +/- seven year old +/- 40 pound dog, Maggie. Maggie loves it--she's stashed all of her little stuffed "babies" there, keeping them safe from their other, larger dog.

I doubt Maggie will want to give that crate up. I'm looking at X-pens now.