Yahoo! Finance has compiled an interesting list of the American cities with the most burglaries. Since burglaries are one of the main reasons that people guard their homes with protection dogs, we thought it was worth discussing here. Protection Dogs Plus began in Texas, so we’ll start off with the Lone Star State’s crime stats:

Dallas is the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area, an area which had a gross metropolitan product of $374 billion, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Of the 61,859 property offenses committed there in 2011, 18,727 were burglaries….the population of San Antonio had grown to 1.3 million, an increase of 16 percent since 2000. This increase is part of the overall population explosion that has been going on in Texas in the new millennium. This growing city experienced 80,868 property offenses in 2011, of which 15,334 were burglaries.

San Antonio seems to be doing a great job of bringing in new residents but not a great job of keeping out crime. Let’s head a couple hundred miles east and see how Houston is doing:

Houston…saw 108,336 property offenses in 2011, of which 68,596 were categorized as “larceny-theft” and 12,281 were motor vehicle thefts…27,459 were burglaries, which puts the city at the top of the list. So if you live there, lock your doors when you go out at night.

Locking your doors is never a bad idea, but let’s remember that criminals are no strangers to breaking and entering. There are a variety of ways to bypass door and window locks: cutting or breaking glass, lock picking, brute force and so on. Wouldn’t it be better if we could stop the bad guys while before they’ve even broken in? We think so—that’s why we train our protection dogs to block off doors and windows and show aggression toward would-be intruders. Our dogs have the bite to back up their bark, but most criminals in their right mind would be deterred from escalating things at that point.

When it comes to sheer number of crimes, this next city surpasses San Antonio, Houston and Dallas:

Chicago…saw a whopping 118,239 property offenses in 2011, of which 26,420 were burglaries.

Let’s also remember to keep things in proportion: the article states that Detroit saw 15,994 burglaries in 2011. That’s around 10,000 fewer than Chicago, but consider that the population of Chicago is almost 4 times greater.

Indianapolis: Among the 46,967 property offenses reported in 2011, 15,122 were burglaries. There were also 26,588 offenses categorized as “larceny-theft” and 5,257 motor vehicle thefts.…In 2011, Columbus (Ohio) experienced 49,043 property offenses, 15,169 of which were burglaries.

One reason that guard dogs are so sought after in places like Texas is that neighbors are often miles apart and there are no friendly eyes to keep watch over properties. But the statistics from larger cities like Chicago and Indianapolis speak to the fact that neighbors are by no means guaranteed protection. You have to question if neighbors would intervene or even notice a property crime in progress. In 2011, Los Angeles, California saw 17,264 burglaries and New York City saw 18,159.

Since we’re located in New Hampshire on the Massachusetts border, we have a great opportunity to prepare our dogs for a variety of settings. When we sell a protection dog, it doesn’t matter if they’re going to Washington, D.C. or Sugarland, Texas, because our dogs have done protection work in both the woods of New Hampshire and the alleys of cities like Boston, Newburyport and Salem. We test our dogs’ off-leash obedience in crowds and with distractions such as cars and bikes. Some of our dogs are specifically selected for their mellow, low energy personalities- perfect for life in an apartment or small house.

If you’d like to take a look at the rest of the list, visit