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Bridget, a dairy farmer from Co Tipperary, who rang in to Liveline to talk about a tax-related scam, went on to tell presenter Joe Duffy that she was nearly targeted in a rural robbery a few months back but believes it was her dogs that saved her.
“I was nearly targeted,” she said. “But I’ve a good few dogs. I can tell you a few dogs is what you’d want – not one.”
They will kick up any time anyone comes into the yard
Bridget went on to say that she has “four or five of them – all small ones – they’re the only ones to have.
“They’re so many of them there,” she added, “and they can come out of any place and they will kick up any time anyone comes into the yard. They’re very good - very, very good.”
Thieves and dogs
Bridget told Duffy that she was given an insight into how thieves feel about targeting houses with dogs when there was a robbery near her farm.
“The Gardaí told us there was a map found in this thief’s car and the map was of the area and on that map there were red marks next to certain houses and when the Gardaí went to the houses they all had dogs.”
A lot of these robberies are using local information
Duffey asked Bridget how the thieves would know the houses had dogs and she said that rural robberies tend to stem from local information.
“A lot of these robberies are local using information – that’s the sad thing about them,” she said.
Advice leaflet
An Garda Síochána has an advice leaflet on how to keep farms secure and one of the tips is to keep a dog.
“A dog can be a noisy deterrent to intruders,” the advice reads.
It also recommends installing CCTV, but as revealed by the Irish Farmers Journal this week, if they do not change the default password on their camera, farmers may leave themselves open to websites live streaming their location to millions of people around the world, leading to even graver security implications than those they started with.
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