Dog sleeping arrangment advice

[bigdave]

Just a quick update. My dog did great with being trained to his dog bed outside the crate. We started by training him to his dog bed during the day. When he would go to his bed and stay, we tried him out of his crate right outside our bedroom door. He did very well. When we go to bed, he gets on his dogbed and stays there for the night. There were a couple of instances where the dog heard my son get up to use bathroom and the dog growled a couple of times and once even barked. I was out of bed in a flash, but there was nothing to worry about because as soon as he saw (smelled) who it was, he stopped and just followed him down the hall and waited for him to finish and then followed him back down the hall and tried to get in bed with my son, but my son took him to his dog bed and settled him in and said "stay" and the dog actually listened!!

  Since then, I have moved his dog bed down the hall so he can see all three bedroom doors in our house and he has not growled since that move. It has worked out splendidly.

[Rowdy]

Sorry, didn't have time to read all the replies.

My experience:
Crate trained the pup like you and then during the day trained him to get on his bed.  Before long during the day he knew to go to his bed to sleep, relax, lay down.  The better half conviced me to start letting him sleep outside of his crate and I would move his bed into my bedroom at night.  Worked like a charm and still does to this day.  It works great and I eventually bought another bed for both rooms which was a blessing because sometimes he wants to get away (company, family, neighbors) and he'll mosey into the bedroom for a nap on his bed.

Good luck, sounds like you're training him good. 

Jake