I'm sorry this happened to you.

My dad's house was robbed a few times before they got dogs. The dogs weren't anything scary, a lab and a medium-sized fluffy golden mutt, but there were no more robberies after that. At my mom's house, we never locked the door during my entire childhood. I never even had a house key. We were lucky and never got robbed.

Now that I have my own house, I don't take chances like that. We deadbolt the front door and sliding glass door, lock the front & back garage doors, deadbolt the door between the garage and house, and lock all the windows every single time we leave the house. We have a motion detector light in the backyard, a big "beware of dog" sign on the gate, and a very territorial dog. The most vulnerable point in my house is the back garage door, since it only has a lock on the handle and doesn't have a deadbolt, and has a big dog door. If someone were to get in, it would be bad, since we have a ton of tools and my bikes in the garage, but the door between the garage and house is always deadbolted so at least they would have a hard time getting in the house.

My dog is a boxer mix. He was a rescue and I got him a year ago when he was a little over a year old. His previous owner had a cat, so I was fairly confident that he would be good with my cat. After a few weeks of supervising their interactions, I felt ok about leaving them alone together, and while they have not become friends, they coexist peacefully. The dog really does provide peace of mind for us. I don't know that he would attack an intruder, but he would definitely warn me, and his bark sounds vicious and scary and might deter them from trying to come in.