@ceejay42 If you cannot leave your dog home alone (crated or loose) for the length of time a dog normally sleeps, you have either a training issue or a breeding issue. Period.
This is true for people managing high-energy working dogs. It is true for people managing working herding dogs (who, by the way, often learn "chill out and stay here until I need you" as their first task on the job). It is true for people managing military working dogs (usually kenneled when their handlers are not on duty). It is true for many sport dogs.
If you cannot do this with your dog, you need to practice teaching the dog how to settle and emotionally regulate. You also need to accept that either you or the dog has some level of separation anxiety--which is an
abnormal behavior that can be
treated and managed, not a normal part of dog ownership. ACDs are not naturally great at self-regulation, but they learn well. They certainly do need regular highly stimulating opportunities to exercise their bodies and minds, but they do not need to be moving constantly, either--and
no herding cattleman worth his salt would tolerate a dog that cannot settle. A dog that can't settle is a dog that is a net
sink of working effort, not a net
source; that is a dog that's going to go out and chase your stock into a stressful collapse instead of waiting patiently to be asked to go do something fun. A practical farmer gets rid of that dog ASAP in favor of a dog that can wait until his skills are needed.
Dogs need to know how to settle and chill out when nothing interesting is happening. If you need to be on hand to reassure your dog 24/7,
that is a training problem. Whether the anxiety is yours or the dog's--and I have seen both cases!--intervention is usually helpful to fix the problem. Insisting that this is a normal need for
any dog is a horrifying way to treat a breed community and betrays a desire to normalize pathological anxiety within the breed. For fuck's sake.