I'm glad to see the reaction to the crate training - I didn't want to offend anyone. I absolutely loved crate training. Max is a year old and still sleeps in his crate - it's his space, and he goes in there on his own. It always makes me angry when people get puppies and allow them free range of the house, then get mad when the puppy inevitably does something wrong. It's like setting the poor thing up for failure - he doesn't know what he can and can't do, and you're not teaching him, but just yelling at him when he messes up. Crate training allowed us to very rarely have to raise our voices with him, because he didn't have a chance to get in trouble in the first place. As long as the crate isn't used as punishment, I think it can be a wonderful tool for all concerned.
The only thing Max did that we couldn't seem to stop him from doing was stealing my husband's clothes from the laundry basket and sneaking them into his crate. He absolutely loves my husband, so we couldn't get mad at him - it was too cute to find him asleep in the morning, curled up on one of his shirts. So my husband wore an old shirt around for a day and let Max have it in his crate, which fixed the problem.