Was talking to a guy on Friday who had been burgled recently. He was telling us how he, his wife and daughters had been in the house at the time and how the thievess
s had bashed their dog to keep it quiet, taken the keys to his and his wife’s cars, loaded them with their goods and driven off… all without then hearing a thing.
A neighbour *had* seen them leave and had chased them in *his* car but lost them near the local McDonald’s. The police had arrived quickly but the thieves had vanished. The cars were found abandoned and stripped in Mt. Druitt a 20 minute drive away down the new motorway link.
This was bad enough, but nothing that unusual really, but then he told us that *twenty* other houses had been robbed over the previous weeks in much the same way in the same few streets.
The area he lives is Bella Vista, a quite affluent area with expensive houses. All had dogs, all had alarm systems… and all ignored their dogs barks, and all had neglected to turn the alarms on at night!
We have learned our lesson… learning a lot lately… and have started turning the system on at night. It isn’t foolproof of course, but at the least the alarms should go off if someone enters the house, scaring them, alerting the neighbours and giving us a chance to respond (call the police, arm ourselves etc.).
Arming the alarm isn’t hard. We have a keypad outside our bedroom door and all we have to do is tap the code in before I walk into the bedroom… not rocket science. We just never used it.
Over the years we’ve occasionally heard of people being burgled around us so I’m not sure why this particular incident should have pushed into action, but it did. Maybe it was the ‘immediacy’ of having him talk to us. Maybe his security arrangements sounded too much like ours. Maybe I’d realised how blase we’d become over the years… no idea. But from now on the dogs are going to find me responding when they bark and the alarms are going to remain *on* whilst we sleep!
I really don’t want armed thugs wandering around the house robbing us whilst we sleep thanks.
And with that, I’m going back to bed. 😀
The Eclectic Interweb 
Paul was woken the other morning by our neighbour, she had disturbed someone trying to take our trailer from the front, she heard moaning and a thump which isn’t surprising as the trailer was full of wood and very very heavy and the thump was the trailer falling down the step – Paul hadn’t had time to take the wood into the garden, whoever it was has I hope, ended up in hospital with a hernia. The trailer was left in the middle of the road and could have caused an accident. It is now chained to an engine which is also on the front x-( but I suppose the engine is now being used to good use).
PS to above: We have 3 dogs and not one of them barked yet they bark 2 minutes before a dalmation being taken for a walk passes our house twice a day!!!
I can’t remember if it’s legal or not to wire the door handles up to the mains ……
Seriously Si … you know that he’s going to forget one day, and it’ll be “the dog” that cops it not the derserving “perp”
🙂
I wouldn’t mind if it was “the stupid dog” but he don’t have hands!
(‘scuse the writing style, but I’m reading “Little Women” …. yes I can read!)
I didn’t know they printed a broille edition – sorry I’ll just feel that again ….
Dunno about her reading ‘broille’ but I wouldn’t put it past her.
None of us really t know what’s come over her… she’s reading all sorts of books lately!! I’ll bet she’s read more books since Xmas than she has over the rest of her life!
We’re tempted to ask her “Who are you and what have you done with the real dogsbody”… but we’re all too scared! 😀