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Charlie, our golden retriever is crate trained and it is working very well. My question is... is it recommended to continue using the crate for sleeping always (ie entire life of dog?). The reason that I ask is twofold. First, we have a cottage and we don't have a crate at the cottage so Charlie sleeps on his blanket and that works fine, no problem whatsoever. Second, we recently moved and don't currently have a decent spot to put a large crate. I do realize that the crate is his den and where he feel safe. So the question is then, can we train him to just sleep on his blanket or is it recommended to continue with the crate somehow?

Thanks in advance!

If he can sleep without the crate, then you don't have to use it. If he uses his blanket to sleep, not your bed and doesn't have accidents at night, fell free to stop using the crate at night.
I would still use the crate while you are out of the house.

Thanks for the advice. Before we moved, we had a 6x10 kennel that we kept him in with his crate during the day. We gradually started leaving him free in the house on weekends while we were out and now we have no problems leaving him free in the house while we are out. Still wondering about at night and such if they need a crate as a den or if I can gradually get rid of the crate all together.

We will probably never get rid of the crate. At first we used it for the potty training and sleeping, now we leave the door open on it and he chooses to sleep in there or not. We always want to keep it though, so he stays comfortable with it. If you ever had to fly somewhere, you need a crate to transport them. With hotels, they typically don't let you leave your dog in there unattended, but they will let you do so if the dog is in a crate. So if you're going somewhere while you're on holidays and your dog can't come with you, ie. you're going golfing and you don't want to leave your dog in the car because it would be too hot, you can leave them in the crate at the hotel. It's fine to teach them to sleep on a dog bed, just keep in mind that you still may need the crate for some things.