Creating Pet Security in Your Home

By now, if you’ve read this blog at all, you know that we always recommend installing a burglar alarm to help secure any property. Installing a security system can help you detect the presence of an intruder on your property immediately. Just as importantly, the blaring siren response an alarm creates generally scares the criminal away as well. Additionally, as we’ll discuss in a bit, having your alarm monitored can add an effective emergency response to a security threat as well. Monitored alarms can also detect a variety of other threats to help secure your entire family as well. These features even help you protect the non-human members of your family! Today, we show you how an alarm can help you with creating pet security in your home.

First, we’ll review the importance of opting in to our monitoring service. Doing so creates a response to any alarm activity that can help you do what you need to in order to keep your pets safe. Then, we’ll introduce our environmental sensors, which alert you to any weather-related home emergencies in your absence. From there, we’ll discuss how adding surveillance to your home can add valuable pet security. The ability to watch your pets at all times can create both security and peace of mind. Finally, we’ll touch on our monitored smoke and carbon monoxide offerings. These life safety devices play a huge role in potentially saving a pet if a fire or carbon monoxide leak occurs in your home. Now, let’s dive in with a look at our security monitoring services!

Have Your Security System Monitored

We discussed this issue in depth in our post answering the question “Should I Have My Security System Monitored?,” and the remaining pet safety tips in this post do rely on a monitored home security system. Having pets at home in your absence adds even more urgency to taking this important step. Creating monitored security involves connecting your alarm to our central station through the use of phone lines or more modern equipment, such as a cellular dialer that uses Wi-fi and cellular data for communication.

Upon alarm activation, this connection allows your alarm to contact our central station. In turn, a central station dispatcher will contact you to check on the issue. If necessary, the dispatcher can also dispatch the proper authorities to check on the situation. We strongly recommend using a cell dialer for your monitoring. Doing so ensures that your security system can call for help during phone line outages. Moreover, burglars often cut the phone lines as a precaution before breaking into a house, making this an even more important feature.

Adding interactive services allows you to control your security system remotely from a phone or computer, and also provides you with a constant, direct connection to your security system. Our own cell dialer, powered by Alarm.com, includes interactive capabilities right off the bat. This cell dialer also acts as a smart home hub. Some of the following suggestions work even better when combined with these smart home capabilities. We will point these extra features out to you as we go. Now, let’s see how adding additional sensors to your alarm can help with creating pet security in your home.

Use Security Sensors to Track Pet Activity

We briefly discussed using additional alarm sensors to make sure pets stay in the yard in our blog post 5 Unconventional Uses for Contact Sensors. Adding these sensors to exterior gates is a great way to make sure that pets do not escape the yard without you knowing. However, this concept does not have to begin and end with contacting gates in the yard. We also recommend adding sensors to interior doors that you count on to produce pet security in your home.

When used with our Alarm.com dialer, these sensors allow you to track activity within your home at all times. For example, if you need to keep the cat out of the basement, you can receive an alert if you fail to close the basement door, or if someone opens the door after you’ve closed it. Additionally, you can even create an alert to let you know about a door that stays open for a certain amount of time as well. You can choose to receive these alerts at all times, even when your alarm is disarmed.

Tracking the areas that your pets may have access to helps you keep your pet safe. Of course, taking advantage of this option also provides extra peace of mind. No longer will you leave the house wondering if you forgot to shut a door or lock a gate that helps keep your pet safe. Next up, let’s look at the role of surveillance in creating pet security.

Install Cameras to Watch Your Pets

Cameras make a great way to add security to your home in case of a break-in. We discussed cameras as a way to catch thieves in our 7 Tips to Improve Home Security for New Homeowners. The security that a camera system adds, however, is not limited to keeping burglars at bay. Many of our customers use cameras to track their pets. Cameras provide a live look-in to a house at any time, so you can always check on your pets’ movements and safety within your house.

When used with Alarm.com, you can also set up alert notifications to show you real-time clips of motion in rooms with a camera. You can also use this concept to track pet-sitters as well as pets. While on vacation, you may expect someone to show up to feed your pets or let them outside. Your cameras will send you a video when the sitter arrives. You can also set an alert in case your cameras did not detect motion when expected. If your pet-sitter does not show up before a deadline, your camera will let you know. If you continue to receive “no-show” alerts, you may want to find a new sitter! Let’s continue our discussion on creating pet security with a look at our environmental sensors.

Use Environmental Sensors to Ensure Pet Safety

Most people associate security systems with burglar and fire prevention. However, tracking and controlling the environment adds even more comfort and security to your home. If you have pets at home, this comfort and security also creates extra pet safety. For example, if a water pipe freezes or bursts and you do not know about it right away, this can endanger your pet. Freeze and flood sensors will alert your security system to these situations. As a result, you will receive a phone call right away. A temperature sensor will also make sure that temperatures stay within a comfortable range for your pet. For example, you can make sure that you know if your home’s temperature falls below 40 degrees or rises above 80 degrees.

Finally, adding a smart thermostat to your security system gives you real-time control of the environment in your home. Now you can always check in on — and change — your home’s temperature. You can also set an acceptable temperature range for your home. If the temperature falls outside that range, you will receive an alert on your phone. This real-time information and control takes the guesswork out of keeping your pets comfortable at home. Now, let’s wrap our post on creating pet security up with a focus on our important monitored smoke and carbon monoxide detectors!

Create Monitored Smoke and CO Detection

At this point, we’ve shown you several types of security equipment that we can add to your alarm.  These devices expand the security of your alarm from just detecting burglary attempts to securing your home against any number of other threats. We also offer monitored smoke and carbon monoxide (or “CO”) detection that can alert you to the presence of a fire or carbon monoxide-related emergency in your home. Smoke and CO detectors create a siren response to detecting these dangers. More importantly, these devices also create a fire department dispatch that can save your home in your absence, or even save the life of you or a family member — including a pet — during one of these events! For this reason, we highly recommend adding these devices to any alarm system.

Putting it All Together and Creating Pet Security in Your Own Home

A security system provides a powerful extra layer of security for your pets. If you have questions about adding pet safety features to a new or existing home security system, feel free to contact us. Over our 38 years in business, we’ve helped hundreds of homeowners with this type of security. Perhaps you had a security system installed before getting pets and need to add some additional security equipment. Or, perhaps you do not have a security system at all, and just want to make sure that when your system is installed you take the proper steps to make pet safety part of the initial design. No matter the case, we will be happy to help. Together, we can help you create a complete security plan to keep your, your most valued possessions, and your furry family members as safe and secure as possible!