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A strange occurrence recently has me pondering whether to go with a dog or an alarm. Since I am spreadsheet-centric any insight into annual costs would be appreciated.

As a non-political aside, this is mainly for when I'm on the road. I'm an occasional hunter and have my concealed permit so when I'm home there's little point in having either. Mrs. Murfvol might rest better when I'm gone if she had one of the above.

Both. Double security can't be a bad thing. A rescue dog can be a great addition to the family.

"1. homeowner with a gun 2.dog", when asked about alarms they stated "there's always a way around an alarm", but as stated above, both can't be bad.

Good thing you aren't a dog - could be a long, long long wait for a "rescue"  :naughty:

If you're only interested for the purposes of security, I'm not sure I'd recommend a dog. A dog is an addition to the family and is more work, time, and money than you may want to spend if its only purpose is to discourage criminals. Depending on the size of the dog, where you expect it to sleep, whether it has any health issues, what you do with it when you travel, etc. you may be looking at upwards of $1,000 per year to care for it. They aren't cheap and they aren't easy, particularly if you want them to have a long, healthy, and happy life.

With that said, we'd never give our dogs up for anything. We didn't get them with burglar-biting in mind (the two of them combine to weigh 50 lbs), but they bark at any unfamiliar noises and unexpected people, and it tends to be the barking-- not the threat of injury-- that deters criminals. They also love us more than we could possibly deserve and are the most loyal friends you could imagine.

These days alarms can be managed online too.  I even have an app on my phone.  It gives me peace of mind when I'm away and can bring up my alarm system on the web and it says "system normal".  In my experience dogs can be pretty unpredictable.  Check out Frontpoint security solution.  I think mine runs around $40 a month and you can get huge hardware discounts by signing some sort of contract.  The Frontpoint system is very flexible and easy to install.

As we all know, if someone really wants in they will get in. The best we can do is to make it as difficult or appear as difficult as you can.  I'm a really, really paranoid person.  It is likely due in large part to the fact that my family's home was burglarized several times when I was a child.  Once the guy was still in our home when we arrived and my Dad confronted him and they literally had a brawl in our living room.  So, I'm sure that traumatized me in some way.

Having said that I put something like this on all my exterior doors in addition to my alarm system: http://www.nightlock.com/ (http://www.nightlock.com/)

Some think it's overkill, but it helps me sleep at night.  I mostly fear home invasion, so if someone wants to bust in on us when we're home I want to buy myself time to load my Glock AND my Browning 12 guage.

I have both!  As stated above, a dog will hear a lot more than you will especially when you are sleeping.  With the alarm part, make sure you have a cellular backup in case your phone lines are cut.  The triple pane windows are a hell of a deterrent for anyone wanting to break into my house...lol..will be beating for a few minutes to get in.

Thanks a ton for the feedback. I grew up with mutts that lived outside, so I'm not a big fan of indoor creatures. But if we go the dog route I want two so they have a friend. My wife would let them come in, and I don't want to have a pet that's ignored. We have a good size fenced backyard, but I'd feel guilty if they stayed out there all the time. 

That having been said, I'm not into dropping $1k after tax annually...and the wife has wanted a bulldog for a loooong time. The only reason she doesn't have one is the hassle/expense when she's gone. I'm kind of like the rescue route myself.

I like the idea of an alarm system being low maintenance (and checkable from my phone), but view a dog as a more fail safe heads-up for potential problems, or possums, or other dogs, or deer, or...

And yeah Vinnie, I love my G17, even though I'm much more accurate with my .45.

Definitely plan for a dog to spend time inside. So much of what makes a dog a great companion is lost if they're 24/7 outside.

The $1,000 would be a high estimate if you have healthy dogs that rarely need to be boarded. We spoil our two a bit and it costs >$60/night to board them. We're not gone that often-- maybe 6-7 nights a year-- but you can do the math. Add food, vet, and heartworm/flea/tick preventive medicine to that and you're probably in the $700-800 range. You also have to plan around them a bit since the yard is their bathroom, but it's not so bad as having a kid.

But a bulldog . . . they can have some chronic health issues due to the shape of their faces and their joints. I would almost count on a bulldog being expensive. What you need is a rescue mutt, picked up at the puppy stage. Mutts tend to be smarter and far healthier than pure breeds of any kind. Ours are a beagle and something-or-other mix and a boston terrier and something-or-other mix. Healthy, happy, smart, loyal, and affectionate.

Let me pose a dumb question. How long does it take to house train the average mutt? I've gotten a variety of answers with random Google searches. And yeah Clock, I've read about bulldogs having serious issues. Anecdotally UGA III - UGA MCIX seem to bear that out.

This is the biggest reason I haven't gotten a dog.  I like dogs, I'm just not the type that would devote the time and attention a dog deserves.  I would think if you want a "good" dog that is going to serve efficiently as a deterrent then you'd have to put in the time to teach it behavior.

We got our first puppy when he was 7 weeks old and he was trained in a matter of weeks (as in, he knew to ask to go outside) but still peed in his crate frequently while we were at work until his bladder control was good enough to wait for us to let him out. Our other puppy was almost a year old and had already been trained.

One key is to never, ever let them out of your sight while they're roaming the house and you're training them. If you're there, you can interrupt them and take them immediately outside and that builds the association. If they get away from you and pee in a corner somewhere, you've lost a teaching moment and they're developing a bad habit. It absolutely does not work to rub their nose in it even mere minutes after they've done it. They don't associate the act of peeing with the substance, urine, so they learn nothing unless you are there to interrupt the act. This is the biggest mistake people make in house training, IMO-- letting accidents happen out of sight.

The other key is to be in the habit of taking them out frequently whether you think they have to go or not, then praising them tremendously when they do business outside. That develops the positive feedback, and interrupting them in the middle associates the activity "going outside" with the activity "doing business." Do it right and very early on it'll just be how things are done in your family rather than some task or responsibility.

Some dogs pick up on the training quicker than others and some have more lapses later than others but I'm convinced that if you're really devoted to getting it right in that first month or so, you'll have a dog that doesn't even think about doing business in the house. Once our dogs were older than a few months there has never, ever been an accident. Going in the house is just not an activity that registers in their brains.

Yes to all the above.
Even when getting a housebroken pup/dog they and you have to learn their new owners/surroundings, routines, etc.  There can be a few accidents and crate training is the way to go IMO. 

Out new (6 months now) dog has figured out that if comes up to meand stares a bit he gets to go outside, do his business and get a bit of exercise in.

That sounds manageable, though I've never trained a dog before. Growing up we had great dogs, but they were mostly pretty dumb.

Mostly off-topic, but after having inside dogs, cats, rabbits, fish and one of those stupid looking miniature possums -- name of which I cannot recall -- I have sworn off inside pets. Well, except for an amphibian tank. I bought a large aquarium with the intent of building a habitat for tree frogs and salamanders but haven't gotten around to it yet (weird maybe, but it's how I roll).

My wife had a beagle in the house. I love beagles; they're my favorite breed. But there are two types of beagles: really smart ones and really dumb ones. Flash (yeah, yeah, I know...but if you get a beagle you have to name if Flash or Copper, right?) was a dumb one. The first night he was in the house, I used furniture to box him in the living room so he would stop coming and jumping on the bed. He woke me up at 3 a.m. howling . . . and a beagle makes a lot of noise when it howls in an enclosed area. I went down to find every book, magazine, newspaper, etc., ripped to shreds and piled in the middle of the floor. He had made a big, steamy deposit right in the middle of it and was sitting beside it, nose pointed at the ceiling and howling at the top of his lungs, as if he wanted everyone to come see his mess he was so proud of.

It was all downhill from there. The final straw was when I came home from work one day to find water dripping through the drywall ceiling. I walked in just as the ceiling gave way and the drip became a waterfall. He had managed to bust the toilet tank in the upstairs bathroom. And I still haven't figured out how. Next my wife got a cocker spaniel named Trigger. It was impossible to housebreak. It never learned the concept of begging to go out. Its idea of puppy pads was to place its front paws on the pad and pee or poop on the carpet. It had bladder control issues when it was excited. Every time the doorbell rang, it dribbled all the way down the stairs.

I said no more inside dogs at that point. I would fight a man over my dogs, but they're strictly outside dogs. My furniture and my floors thank me, and the dogs really couldn't care less.

Your first problem was not crate training...although that may not have helped the howling.  Second problem was getting dogs that are often not too smart.     Now, get a cairn terrier and crate train it.   My female had the excited tinkles for a couple of years, but has outgrown that now.    :)

Well, I left out part of the story. We had several other inside dogs. I'm just not a big fan of pets in the house. I don't deal well with the shedding and the messes, plus the problems it poses for visitors with allergies, or having to board them or take them along when I'm on the road (as opposed to simply having my neighbor stop by daily to feed/water). If I'm ever an old widower, I might change my mind.  :laugh:

But I'll take exception to beagles not being smart. I've been around beagles all my life and I'll take a smart beagle over any other breed. I know a lot of people love their terriers, but me and lap dogs don't mix.