Thank you for your reply. Good advice and will indeed try ignoring any inside mess. The first thing that really stands out is that 3 months may not be a long time afterall... just that seeing her in the crate so much, we almost felt like we had gotten a bird, not a dog :-)

It gets discouraging when you hear dogs getting trained in a matter of days or weeks. I guess on the bright side, we did train her to stay and to shake a paw, and stop licking us non-stop. We just got to be more patient on the pooing and stop feeling so guilty about the crating. She doesn't go in the crate. So when do we know she is ready to come out of the crate... trial and error I suppose...

We sure hope one day she can wander freely about the house.

Thank you again.