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[quote=Anonymous][quote]. if u keep a dog locked up for that lengh of time it's time to find a loving home jack Russell's need lots of exercise they were bred to work. unreal[/quote]

Seriously.  I am a big proponent of crate training and grew up having lived with two dogs who we got as 8 week old puppies who we crate trained to house train, and my dog sleeps in her crate at night (in our bedroom at the foot of our bed).  However, I think the crate is a tool largely for housebreaking and a way to give them a safe space/bed area, not something that should be used permanently to restrain the dog all day.  The goal should be to take advantage of their instinct to not soil where they sleep, and slowly let them get that the rest of the house is their den as well.  I think once they are essentially housebroken, you should leave the crate door open and restrict them to an area of the house that is not a pain to clean up if they have an accident (the kitchen, or we live in an apartment with hardwood floors so we let her hang out in the living room) until you can trust them everywhere.  They'll never figure out that the rest of the house is someplace that shouldn't be soiled if you don't give them this freedom.  My dog is a lot less hyper and neurotic if she can wander around and check out the window and bark at cats, sleep on the couch, and play with her toys then if she is crated all day.  It's not healthy to leave a full grown dog in the crate for 10 or 11 hours straight.  Even with young puppies, you shouldn't leave them in their crate for more than ~4 hours.  By a year they should be housebroken.

Honestly, since DH and I both work and live in an apartment, we specifically adopted a mutt who was a mix of two lower energy breeds (i.e. NOT a Jack Russell), who was small enough to comfortably hang out in an apartment all day, and who was an older puppy (8 months...and that was only ok because she's a very calm, laid back dog, otherwise I would have stuck to more like 1-3 years) who was already housebroken.  Even with that, since she is still young and has a lot of energy, we are very diligent about making sure she gets enough exercise and play time and take her for a walk with some off leash run time before we go to work and a very long walk after work and go to the dog park on the weekends as well as doing some training in the evening.  What is unreal is that people adopt high energy dogs that are bred to work as young puppies and then wonder why they have behavioral problems.  People need to do some more soul searching before they get a dog about what breed and what age dog they can really care for. If both parents work out of the house, or if they have several toddlers who need constant supervision, then don't adopt a young puppy who is super high energy and needs tons of exercise, like, say a Jack Russell, Border Collie, or even a younger lab or golden retriever.[/quote]

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