I'm wondering how many mastiff owners allow there dogs to sleep in their room and or on their bed?
I just have to say that your Major is absolutely ADORABLE! And so smart!! Bullmastiffs are just the best, aren't they? You are doing such a GREAT job with him!
In answer to your question, we let our Maizey sleep on our bed when she was little. She is part Bullmastiff/Cane Corso, and "only" about 100 pounds. We got her in December, so by the time she turned 6 months old it was warmer in the house and she decided all of a sudden one day that she was a "big girl" now and stopped sleeping with us, and she started sleeping with the big boys (at that time our 9 year old Bloodhound, Beau, and 5 year old Bullmastiff, Jasper) in the living room. So when we got Molly last summer, of course we let her sleep with us. When she turned 6 months old, she wasn't showing any signs of moving out of our bed voluntarily, so we just very gently refused to let her into bed with us, and she obligingly went out to sleep with Maizey in the living room. She didn't cry or make a fuss. However, a couple of weeks ago she asked to sleep with us again, so I let her into the bed, and she's been sleeping with us every night again now. She just turned 9 months old, but she has been so good in bed that we actually enjoy having her sleep with us. She's very considerate, always sleeps down in the empty spot by our feet, tries really hard not to crowd us, and if I give her a little nudge she's always like "oh sorry about that" and moves over. Bullmastiffs can make themselves fit into a small space if they need to, so most of the time we don't even know she's in the bed with us! I'm thinking once the weather warms up she may move out again like Maizey did. I always keep a couple of blankets on the floor beside my bed, and Maizey will come in and out during the night and sleep on that -- we heat with a wood stove and she comes in to sleep with us and cool off, and then goes back out to the living room to sleep by the wood stove and warm up. Sometimes Molly will sleep on the blankets or out in the living room with Maizey. The only puppy we ever crated was our Bloodhound, he was extremely insecure as a puppy and wanted to sleep UNDER our bed, so we got him a crate and put it by our bed, and he loved it and slept in there and used it when he got overexcited or scared. We never locked him in there, the door was always open. He eventually grew out of his insecurities and didn't need the crate when he got older. Our other two Bullmastiff males we inherited from my son, Jasper was 6 months old when we got him, he was already physically and mentally mature, and used to sleeping on his own. Bowser was 2 years old when we got him (shortly after our Bloodhound passed away at age 10), he was actually Maizey's litter-mate, they were brother and sister, and he had been pretty much living in a crate his whole life, he was rarely ever let out of the crate, because he was supposedly "out of control" so when we got him we gave his crate to the local animal shelter and promised him he would never be crated again, and he never was. Our vet immediately discovered that he was severely hypothyroid, his thyroid gland was basically not working at all, and once he started medication, he became the sweetest dog ever and definitely did not need to be crated.
I found our dog beds that we keep in the living room near the woodstove on "Freecycle" -- the local girl scout camp had a ton of old camp twin size mattresses, completely wrapped in plastic waterproof material, that they were giving away for FREE! So I got about 12 of them and put 10 in the attic for future use, and the other two I cover with inexpensive twin size fitted sheets from Walmart -- the beds are completely waterproof and I can wash the sheets in the washer! The dogs LOVE them and they are the first beds I've had that haven't been destroyed by puppies chewing on them. We have a Honda Element that we removed the rear seats from, and put a few of the girl scout mattresses in there and covered them with a tarp, so they have a pretty great ride, too!