Written by Johnny Courville of Loyal Guard Kennels and Butch Cappell of K-9 Pro-Sports, This article has the unique perspective of being written by a Law-Enforcement Officer and someone who spent decades as the owner and trainer of the biggest guard dog business in the U.S. and Mexico.
Here is the decision one has to make when they decide on rather to get an alarm or a dog to protect themselves and/or their property. Do you want to accurately record when and how your home and/or business was broken into or do you want to stop the intruder before they can steal, kill, rape or abduct?
If you only want to be able to tell the police when the crime occurred then the alarm is the choice for you. As the alarm works, most of the time. However, alarm calls are typically low priority for police when they are busy, due to the amount of false alarms each and every dept. receives daily. Some will say that the police are here to serve and protect they should protect us. I realize that is what the public has been taught however, in reality that was just a politician’s slogan that got popular. In reality for the police to protect the citizens we would have to have one officer per person in the population. Rather police are here primarily as a deterrent for crime, a job a dog in your home can augment. A dog in your home can not only protect you from harm but can also leave the suspect’s DNA evidence on the scene to help us catch the suspect. Think about how many people are in your city, now think about how many cops are out patrolling at any given moment, do you really think we can protect you every moment of the day?
Back to alarms, consider many alarms are easily bypassed when a burglar is serious about stealing your possessions or doing you harm. I will not include the various ways to do so here as I do not want a criminal to read my article and take advantage of more people. Here is something about alarm response times for you to consider, as a Patrol Officer I have set off alarms on large buildings when doing business checks for one reason or another, taken several minutes to check the building and have time to get back in my patrol car and be leaving the building before the alarm company even contacts our dispatcher. Now let's say it took me 10 minutes to check the building, 10 minutes plus our 3 minute average response time which is faster then average for a police dept. you now have 13 minutes for a thief to get in and out with your valuables before police arrive on scene. This is if everyone is working at peak efficiency, and who is at their peak at 2:00 A.M.? If you have a really good state of the art system and an amateur burglar you will possibly get video of the suspect, but in my experience few people actually have that nice of a system and those that do are usually hit by the professional burglars, who know how to get around alarms, but they can’t get around the dog. These people specialize in not getting caught and bypassing security systems. However they are not usually after individuals but rather big businesses. Occasionally you will see a determined home burglary but it is personal like a divorce or inheritance disputes etc...
So how do you stop a pro? Well? Your dog, of course! You could even utilize dogs and alarms. You see the professional burglar cases out his future victim ahead of time and looks for the easiest and safest places to hit. Most burglars do not want to get bit, and the simple presence of a large aggressive looking dog will make them look for an easier target. Most burglars do not want to get bit, and the simple presence of a large aggressive looking dog will make them look for an easier target. No system is foolproof and the occasional burglar can outsmart the dog, but most do not want to take the chance. In my experience I have never worked a burglary where there was a large dog in the home. I can think of a home invasion that with the right dog would have probably been prevented. No system is foolproof and the occasional burglar can outsmart the dog, but most will not take the chance. In my experience, I have never worked a burglary where there was a large dog in the home, never. I remember a home invasion that with the right dog could have been prevented, but there was no dog in the home! Even if an intruder gets into your home with a dog and worse case scenario, manages to steal, hurt or kill something or someone. With a trained dog on the scene there is a good chance the suspect will leave behind sufficient DNA evidence for Law Enforcement to use to track down the intruder(s).
While I am not sure about the civil liabilities of dog bites on intruders in your state as they are all different, having to pay money from a law suit is definitely preferred over being killed or someone in your home being raped/abducted and catching AIDS or some other disease. In our day and age these are real threats to our safety that we need to consider.
Real life articles about dogs protecting their owners.
Keep in mind that an untrained dog is not reliable protection, but even so these dogs saved their owners from being victims.
http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0209/articles/020902a.htm
Above is a story about a dog saving his owner from a rape.
http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0202/articles/020218a.htm
Above is a nice article about a dog saving his gun wielding owner from a burglary.
ROGERS' RAMPAGE: Dad's wolf-mastiff gave girlfriend enough time to call police.
http://dwb.adn.com/news/alaska/crime/story/9501419p-9412264c.html
The above story is worth reading. The dead victim’s son kills his own father with a machete then turns to attack the dead man’s girlfriend and by this time the dog arrives and attacks the macheette wielding son saving the woman’s life.
Dog saves girl from attack: Collie bites pervert’s legs