i own 2 dogs for 1 reason, to deter intruders. what good is a dog if you know it won't bite? both of my dogs WILL bite strangers.
leopold: Do your dogs bite to kill? If not, where is the sense in that? Survivors will merely whine to the authorities. As a result, your dogs will be put down, and you will be fined.
i usually keep them in the house. when they are outside they are chained. when company comes over i usually put them outside or in the basement. if someone gets bit by one of my dogs they will have to prove i was negligent.
if you put up beware of dog signs at all the entrances to your house then you will be in the right should they bite a burglar.
This is one of those sad issues where a minority (but a large and really stupid and nasty minority) ruin it for everybody. Not all owners of dangerous dogs are as responsible as you are. Some enjoy striking fear into the hearts of their neighbors, others are negligent and don't give it much thought, and quite a few are just not quite diligent enough and their strong alpha dogs find a way out of their yard. Some asshole around here walks a pit bull without a leash, and he's attacked a couple of dogs. Nobody's managed to chase them down yet. At least once a week there's a news article in this region about a killer dog that tunnels, wriggles or jumps out of his yard, or squeezes through the front door when it's opened for a visitor, and wreaks havoc in the neighborhood, killing other pets and the occasional child. Some sociopaths keep Presa Canarios and other breeds that were developed specifically for fighting and rather easily overwhelm their owners on the way to the elevator and take down adult humans. I realize you're not like that, but killer dogs are a really sensitive issue with humanity and it's not going to go away. Dogs are wolves who self-domesticated about 15,000 years ago, the descendants of the individuals who decided it would be a nicer life to be part of a multi-species community and learn to get along with humans instead of living a survival-obsessed life of "freedom" in the wild. Our history of living in peace with dogs is older than civilization. The dog as man's best friend, our children's trusted playmate, the loving creature with whom we share our entire world, is an archetype in human culture. We learned to live in peace with dogs a couple of thousand years before we learned to live in peace with humans from another tribe, and as I have suggested I believe that without dogs we might never have done that. To train or breed dogs for the temperatment to attack human beings goes against the nature of both species and is a violation of a covenant that we've had since before we started building permanent settlements. You can hardly be surprised when people react with outrage and hatred toward those who violate that covenant.
