By the way...what woke me up out of my sleep was our little Spring...growling....
 

  

Awww...

The problem with dogs for security is they will not show the reasoned restraint that you did, and would likely throw themselves into the jaws of death to please you. Imagine how you'd feel if Vas or Surg got killed or crippled, or if they lit into the neighbor's kid who was just retrieving a ball.

I'd be more concerned with making sure my doors and locks were adequate. For most would-be burglars, just having the homeowner there is enough of a deterrent. They're far more likely to visit while you're away.

Might I suggest a webcam? Mine is set up so when you come in, either by door or window, it snaps your photo and uploads it to my ftp server. Even if you notice the camera and disable it, it's too late - your picture's already been taken. My business partner's home was burgled while he was out of town. He was pretty sure he knew who did it, but couldn't prove it. That's when I installed my camera and suggested the same for him.

There's a lot of really good hidden cameras out now and many can be watched from anything with an internet connection.

As for the dogs, the dogs themselves aren't always necessary.  Just putting a big bowl and large bone outside can be enough to add doubt to any would-be burgler.  They're already in a fragile state of mind, you just need to push them a bit over the top and they'll go elsewhere.

That said, it's easy to rig up a remotely controlled speaker so you can play "disturbing" sounds abruptly that will scare the living you-know-what out of 'em.  I had a neighbor who got fed up with kids cutting through his property that did this and the reactions should have been on TV.  He only had a few samples, but they provided lots of humor (the growl of a LARGE cat, a machine gun, a chainsaw and a big dog barking were three I can remember).  Although he would trigger them himself, you could easily set something up with a motion detector (something he avoided because of wild animals).  He'd use the growling cat one when he saw someone going by in the middle of the night.  Sheer terror!  Hehe...

I like the webcam idea! I'm home 99% of the time, but I admit that I'm always a bit worried when we leave for a couple of days. We do have insurances but there's some stuff that you cannot simply replace, like the old favorite guitars.

As for dogs, well, I've wanted to get one for quite a while. I don't think I'd actually let the dog out, but it could still scare thieves away and/or prevent me. 

The reason those kids picked our backyard was probably that the blinds were practically closed, they saw no one inside and figured out that they could stay there for a while. They even had time to re-arange the furniture to sit closer to the wall not to be seen. 

We were sleeping on the second floor, and my wife has this white noise thingie that she needs to sleep - I have a love/hate relation with that device because it drowns out the noises that I would need to hear to keep the place safe. Between that, the AC and the humidifiers, I'm having a tough time scanning for noises.

A dog could have acted as a helper on that one, even from inside the house. I'm thinking that the kids or any thief would have probably run away the minute the dog started making noise.

Kids these days are not kids when they're breaking into houses. They're liable to be packing gang bangers. Be afraid.

Yep. 

Worst part is, there's very little you can do with those rotten apples. Sending them to jail will only result in them learning the ropes and becoming even better and more serious criminals. But we can't just let them run, can we...

Well you sure can't hide them on your patio. They've got you on their radar now.

And they're on mine.

SteveStrummerUK



 

Cool. With this I could (theoretically) hit a double home runner. Problem is, how do I "run" a double home runner?