Margaret and I were reading the article by Leerburg and in his article under the section "your puppy needs exercise" he says that the puppies are never off leash in the house when they are outside the exercise pen until they can follow "come" command with distractions. He says this will take until they are nine months old. We have been playing with Samson off leash and only using leash when we go outside. Any thoughts?

We are finding a lot of conflicting information when we are reading. Shirlee Kalstone in her book How to Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days, says to go out and go potty then come straight back in so the puppy will know that going out is to go potty. In another article they said when you go out go potty then reward your puppy by playing outside with them otherwise they will doddle so they don't have to come back in.

We are just trying to do the best with Samson and getting a little confused.
Any thoughts would be awesome.

Nice concept to housebreak in 7 days but I don't know how realistic that is with babies. What I do is keep a schedule - get up, take the pup out of her crate and immediately outside. 99.9% of the time she'll pee - praise her, bring her inside while I make coffee and give her some food. Then back outside and again almost always she will poop with a little exercise. I'm home of course so it's a little different than when you need to leave for work - but after a few days of taking her out on a schedule I have it figured out for her - and you'll need to figure out Samson's natural schedule - but you'll notice that he likely only relieves himself 3 times a day or so (poop, not pee) and that will generally be

when he gets up from sleeping

when he's getting some exercise

after he's eaten

Other than at night he should only be crated around 4 hours maximum during the day, giving him plenty of exercise and mental stimulation is critical now for his physical and mental health. Praise him whenever he does relieve himself in the area you've designated for this - I wouldn't scold him for going outside ever since that's always better than inside but I'd especially praise him when he does go in the right place. Over the years I guess I've tended to scold less and less and praise more and more since most of what pups do that annoys us are things over which we, as humans, have control.