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Comment by iancmceachern | Hacker News Reader

My favorite anti burglar move is to have dogs.

They make more mess than the chalk thing, but they're way softer and more fun.

My neighbor has Guineafowls which will tell the entire neighborhood something isnt right. they also lay eggs a bit smaller than a chickens egg. I presume its not possible in a first world city though.

My city (Seattle) allows up to three fowl or certain kinds of livestock even in the fairly dense residential areas (the law is left over from many years ago, but backyard hens have become kinda fashionable in recent decades). But you can't keep a rooster, because it's too noisy. I suspect that keeping watch-fowl would have the same problem, neighbors would file noise complaints against you.

Even more fun; I have a dog who likes to rest his head on the window sill, so if I combined the two methods, the mess would be indescribable!

I've heard that dogs aren't a great way to deter people from breaking in. I'm not entirely convinced about that though. I imagine many people would be put off by dogs especially the larger ones (this guy agrees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtwD-c9hn58)

Where did you hear that?

It's also highly dependent on the dog. A chihuahua maybe not so much, a big Rottie maybe yes.

It seems like a weird thing to generalize. It's like saying "people are good or not good at fighting". Well, which people fighting how?

Mainly stories from people who were caught so perhaps not the best sample. (like this one: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/86-burglars-...)

Dogs aren't always a deal breaker for criminals, especially little dogs (which tend to be the loudest). Barking dogs can even be a signal that owners aren't home to shut them up. The idea that neighbors or police are going to investigate a barking dog and catch a bad guy is very optimistic thinking. Kind of like how people just ignore car alarms even while being annoyed by them.

A quick Google search says the opposite, statistically significantly so.

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