eight week old aussiedoodle, breeder said never crate her in the bedroom and our trainer said always crate her in the bedroom for the first six weeks and these are literally opposite instructions and i need to pick one tonight because she comes home friday

okay so pickup day is friday and i have spent the last six weeks reading and prepping for this puppy and i have hit the first wall where two people i trust have given me directly opposite advice and i cannot just split the difference. the puppy is an 8 week old aussiedoodle (mini aussie x mini poodle), female, currently 4.8lb at her last weigh-in at the breeder, going to top out around 22-25lb based on the parents. setup at home is a 1200 sqft single floor house, no kids, no other pets, my partner and i both work hybrid so someone will be home most days for the first 4 weeks.

the breeder has been raising and placing aussiedoodle litters for 9 years and her position is. crate goes in the living room, not the bedroom, ever. her reasoning is that the puppy needs to learn to settle alone from day one and that putting the crate in the bedroom builds a dependency on the human presence that becomes a separation anxiety risk by week 6. her placement contract actually has a clause asking owners to crate train in a separate room from where the humans sleep and she said in our last call that she has seen too many of her puppies develop separation issues from the bedroom-crate route. she sent us home from the meet-and-greet with a setup diagram showing the crate in our living room with a clear line of sight to the front door.

our trainer is a CPDT-KA with 11 years experience and runs the puppy program at a local positive reinforcement school we picked because they were highly recommended. her position is the exact opposite. crate in the bedroom for the first 6 weeks minimum, ideally next to the bed where the puppy can see and hear you. her reasoning is that 8 week old puppies are at a critical attachment window, that the bedroom crate gives the puppy access to nighttime co-regulation which speeds up overnight reliability and reduces overnight crying, and that you can gradually move the crate further from the bed and eventually to a different room starting around week 14 to 16 once the puppy has built confidence. she said in our intake call that bedroom-crating is her standard recommendation and that she rarely sees the dependency issue the breeder is describing if the move-out timeline is handled correctly.

both of them are experienced. both of them have a logically consistent argument. they cannot both be right and i have to pick one by friday morning when we pick her up. specific questions. one, for people who crate trained an 8 week old puppy in either configuration, what actually happened in weeks 1 through 6, especially around overnight crying and overnight potty reliability. two, has anyone done the gradual-move approach the trainer described (bedroom to hallway to living room over weeks 1-16) and did it actually work or did the puppy melt down at each move. three, is there a small breed vs medium breed difference here that matters, because the puppy is going to be small and i wonder if the trainer's framework is calibrated to larger breeds. four, anyone who tried the breeder's living-room-from-day-one approach with a small breed puppy, was the first week brutal for crying or did the puppy adapt. tell me your actual experience, my googling has been useless because every source has an opinion and i need real owner data