Mainly I am trying to figure out how long she should be left alone in her crate.

I work 8 hours a day, so does my wife, though I have the ability to leave work for lunch.  Should I be going home to walk her during lunch?

I give her a good walk in the morning, one when I get home, and one before bed.  Should I go break up her day, or will she be fine?

The crate is bigger than the vet and the adoption people suggested, but it's not massive.  She has room to stand up, turn around, roll over, and lay down.


I am only using the crate initially because we also have a cat.  If I can determine that she won't go kill the cat while I'm gone, I'll probably just baby gate her in the kitchen, but that may take a while to figure out.

We work 8 hours a day as well, we use a crate for one dog as he is destructive still. The boxer has free reign. Crates are great to protect your stuff from being destroyed. In one 8 hour day a determined bored lonely dog can easily destroy your entire house. ASK ME HOW I KNOW?

She's a pit/terrier/mut and is about a year old.  Like I said, she was a rescue, so we aren't even all that sure what she is.  She's a medium sized dog, a bit bigger than a beagle, but smaller than a lab.

The adoption program people told me about the treats in the crate thing, and she even seems fine with it when we are home.  I just noticed that she gets fussy in the crate when
I leave for work.  

She doesn't go crazy, just kinda cries, whimpers, and barks a little...  makes me feel super sad to shut the door and go to work  

I wasn't really a pet person before we got her (the cat is my wife's), but she's completely stolen my heart.  I certainly don't mind crating her, I just want to make sure she's not going to be in distress all day.

Some of the whimpering in the crate can come from being a rescue dog, as they often spend a lot of time in crates. It also signals you leaving which is a little seperation anxiety. All the advice so far has been spot on and what I did with my rescue husky. I feed both my dogs in their crates to this day but havent shut the doors on them in over a year ans they both have free reign of the house (i love my fenced yard and dog door). 8 hours should be fine for dogs 6mos+, but feel free to occasionaly dart home for lunch. after a while you can start with some unsupervised time on the weekends. I started with 30 mins and went from there after a couple months I was fine leaving them uncrated all the time. accidents and the occasional shred still happen but are rare.

Thanks everyone, that all makes sense.

The Warhounds live in their crates when HH6 and I are at work, or when we go to bed. They like their crates, because it's their own little den. They horde their toys inside like dragons and have been taught that when they get a treat, they are to take it to their crate to eat it.

Personally, I'd at least start by going home at lunch.  You want to make sure that the dog never goes in the crate, or  you're shooting yourself in the foot.

If she is going to be crated for 8 hours keep her on a consistant diet. She'll soon learn. We started off crating the pups and after about 6 months old we started leaving them out short periods of time, staying away a little longer each time. We now plan at 8 hours and the dogs are 16 months old. If we are out longer than 4 hours the 6 month old pup goes with us. We stopped crating the pup at 5 months and he stays with the other dogs when were out 4 hours or less. It made it easy for us because the wife stays at home. Another month or two and the pup will be OK to stay 8 hours with the others.

Same. Keep both my Mal and Cane Corso crated during the day. They love their "home", they stay in while were sleeping some nights as well.

I am not comfortable leaving a dog in a crate for 8 hours at a time. I know a lot of people do it, but I don't. And most of the time people say "8 hours", but it always winds up being more like 10 since you have to get to work and come back, etc.

Before we got our first dog as couple, my wife and I figured out how to minimize daytime crating. She skewed her work day in the early direction and I went the opposite way. So I would crate up the dog at around 0830 in the morning and head to work, and she'd be back around 1500. It was a legit 6.5 hours, sometimes 7. However we also arranged for mid-day let-out services. A dog walker would come and get our dog out of the crate for about a half hour for a walk and elimination between 11 and 12.

Certainly crating is an important life skill for a dog as you need it for travelling, training, competing, etc. That said, none of our dogs are crated in the daytime once they are officially housebroken and understand the crate. But Akitas are very chill dogs not prone to running a muck. And most don't prefer crates at home. We're on our third Akita and, just like the other two, after "graduation" from the crate he never used it as a "cave", "den", etc. even though we left it up for him for a few months afterwards. My first Akita did love the crate when competing or showing--for her it was a slice of home while on the road.

Could just use a baby gate to keep them confined to a room if you have a non carpet / wood floor.