The dogs is the best deterrent. Unless the perp is messed up on drugs most do not want to stick around once their presence has been announced. LOL.
I'm kinda isolated from neighbors and on a dead end rural road. We watch out for each other but we can't see each others houses especially early spring - late fall.
One thing about the alarm. If it's monitored off site you need to bury the phone line and leave the aerial cable up as well. More experienced perps cut the phone line first thing. My dad was a Bell Tech and he had one customer he had to keep going back and stringing the dead overhead phone cable back up for him LOL.
Second thing is make sure the alarm system can't seize your phone line. The cheaper systems do just that. I used to work maintenance in a retirement community. I'd have to answer alarms. Most of the time I had to manually disable the system to call the alarm company.
We are right in the middle of Houston on a very busy city street in a nice neighborhood. That doesn’t matter, crooks just think we have more good stuff to steal so crime happens all around us. We have been fortunate.
A cross the street neighbor had his house cleaned out (and I do mean cleaned out) last year. The took his furniture, pictures off the wall and clothes out of his closet. He was at work and they spent the day there stealing his stuff.
His alarm was not sufficient . Our monitored alarm is connected to a cell number so we have no wires. We have indoor scans in case the glass breaks don’t work.
We have tried to cover all possibilities but of course, we could still get robbed. People are being followed home and accosted in the garage. it could happen.