Many years ago I was working in a studio and one of the projects they had me on was a set of videos made by a professional cat burglar. He was in prison and this was part of his sentence, community service. One of the tapes was for Law Enforcement, one was for businesses, and one was for homeowners.
This guy was not only extremely intelligent, but also funny as hell. I will say though that I learned a ton from them, and I wish I kept copies, but I was young and dumb, and have never been able to find them since. The most interesting to me was the homeowner one. He showed just how easily he used to completely bypass locks, gates, parameter alarms, and even motion detection systems. He described how he would case places, and also once inside, the first places he would look for valuables—he mostly worked wealthy neighborhoods & concentrated on jewelry, coins, and cash.
At the end of the video, he did a question and answer with a bunch of other inmates who were also doing time for burglary. The key things they all agreed on, large dog dishes and bones in the yard were a major deterrent, timers on lights were a dead giveaway no-one was home, don’t advertise your alarm system make/model/provider (you basically tell them all they need to know to defeat it). For the most part, they said to make your house look like enough pain in the ass or dangerous that they move on to another house.
“The key things they all agreed on, large dog dishes and bones in the yard were a major deterrent”
Well, we have two accidental wolf hybrids (my MIL’s German shepherd got knocked up).
They are extremely large, extremely sweet, and the most worthless guard dogs in existence. I think being on the top of the food chain made them not be alert when sleeping.
They do look scary, if you ignore the wagging tails or the tendency to bring anyone a deflated soccer ball to throw.
After watching one of those burglar shows I decided to bolt my safe to the floor in the basement.
He said they all carry a hand truck to lift a safe up and roll it out to load in a van. Then bring it back to their shop to cut the hinges off with a grinder.
Any barking dog is typically a deterrent to almost any burglar.
I have home security signs from one of the companies I bought off of EBAY. Two for $50. I do not have a security system. Just the sign about thirty feet up the side of the driveway.