re: Shop break in

Was in your exact shoes a couple years ago between Thanksgiving and Christmas time.  Thankfully I was awake in the living room watching TV and heard the security system announce "Garage Door"...which is referring to the rear man door.  I have a motion activated light in the garage and a window in the door between the kitchen and garage so I knew someone was in there.  Being a country boy I introduced would be burglar to a different type of high velocity tool.  I did not have to do anything besides present that tool and he took of so fast he ran into our chain link fence and flipped over on to his stupid head.  The crazy thing is while the police were at my house they got a call from a neighbor a few houses down about another break in.  My dog and the misses slept thru the break-in, the police arriving, rushing out, and coming back to finish their report.  Now Mack was pushing 11 yrs old at the time and was officially retired from guard dog duty so he got a pass.  But the misses still catches crap for sleeping thru that whole mess.

One tip the police gave me is don't have the door open after dark.  With the amount of lighting in the shop you can clearly see everything in there just by driving/walking buy.  So now I have shutters on every window in the shop.  The shutters for the overhead door are just some 1-1/2 inch rigid foam boards with a pull tab made of duct tape I can wedge in.

It sucks to have to remember to double check locks and make sure the whole place is buttoned up tight but its better than the alternative I guess.  To my knowledge they never caught the would be burglar but did get a couple prints so if he gets picked up on something else maybe they toss on breaking and entering.