Originally Posted by The_Dunedan

Burglar Alarm: Costs hundreds or thousands of dollars, is subject to failures caused by power outage or electronic fault (or even dying batteries), and mostly serves as an automatic 911 dialer...with all the attendant problems that brings with it. The first time our alarm went off, it took 10mins for the alarm company to respond, and another 10-15 before the Sherriff's Office even bothered to call. Bear in mind that this is a high-end multi-sensor suite ON A GUN SHOP. Read through that again; 20-25mins before a potential burglary AT A GUN SHOP was investigated. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in computer hardware, tonnes of credit-card info, thousands of dollars in cash, and oh yeah...LOTS OF GUNS (and I'm not talking about Elmer Fudd's SxS shotgun, here) would have been long gone before Depputy Dawg even picked up the telephone.

Go down to the Pound, or the Humane Society. Get a cute little puppy that will turn into a large, noisy dog, preferably a breed with good ears, a good nose, and an ounce of common sense. Then buy a shotgun. Your outlay will be much smaller, your service much more reliable, and the help you receive in extremis will be much faster and more effective. A downed tree-limb never stopped my Mossberg from working.