Good post we have done most of those same things We don’t have motion sensors outside but we do have lights in and outside the house. A good monitored alarm system and a neighborhood patrolman who is an off duty HPD. We have 4 dogs which is better than 2. 3 are JRT’s and one is blind so his hearing is fantastic. The 4th is a big fat hound dog with a deep bark. All 4 dogs sleep in our bedroom......... NO ONE is going to sneak up on us.
Oh yeah, we are armed. :)
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.