In several decades of dog ownership we've never used a crate. We've always put the dog bed in the kitchen behind either a split barn door or child gate. Once the dog was house trained and past the chewing stage we've given them the run of downstairs.
Our first dog as a family was a lab/st. Bernard cross. He’s currently 2.5 years old and no longer lives with us. Our little one is 6 months. We got them both when they were 8 weeks old and crate traind them both. I swear by it now and will do it with any future pup I get! House training was SO quick. They were both totally hous trained by 10-12 weeks. No more accidents. They would wine at the door when they wanted to go out. The benefit of crate training as opposed to just blocking them in a room is that a crate is very small. It should only be big enough for them to sleep in (for big dogs, you can usually get the crates that have dividers that you move as the dog grows). The dog won’t want to pee in its bed because that would mean he would sleep beside his pee/poo. If you just block them in a room, they can still go in a corner and sleep at the other end of the room. So the dog won’t go to the washroom in its crate. You then can take the dog outside to relieve him/herself which will reinforce that the outside is the place to go. It’s also recommended that you crate train for about an hour or two a day as well.
