Are you sure about a "Beware of Dog" sign?
In many areas, that is an admission of having a dangerous dog and opens you up to lawsuits....

Etsy has plenty of nice signage.

Oh, and most people don't know what "No solicitors" means.
Really! And even if they do, they will smart-alecky say "But I am not a lawyer!".

This post was edited by LuAnn_in_PA on Wed, Sep 4, 13 at 15:36

I just googled "dog signs", and a few sites came up. Here are a couple, probably all too tacky, but I thought they were fun.

First the No Soliciiters:

I say this all the time

Let me know if any of them do strike your fancy, I'll send you the link where you can buy them, but I think you could easily find them through google

Haha. There are some fun ones out there--I like the "beware of dog (and the cat is not to be trusted either)" sign for some reason.

I guess if "no solicitors" is too subtle, I should forget about the matching "no proselytizing" sign.

Maybe I need a custom shop.

If you wanted to get creative you could design your own sign online and have it mailed to your house. When I was selling my home I designed a front yard sign to look like a realtor sign so I wouldnâÂÂt get bothered by nuts with no money thinking they can get a steal from a buy owner or millions of realtors wanting me to list with them. This is the company I used http://www.thesignchef.com/custom-signs/metal-signs .

Bee, love that my dog has a gun sign!

Here is a link that might be useful: design a sign online

We live with a pair of Australian Shepherds. They are very "busy" dogs. We have a small plaque mounted above our doorbell button at our front entry that reads "Chien Lunatique". When the doorbell rings, the meaning is evident!

Here is a link that might be useful: Having fun with French

Our house has two gates. One had room for only a few cars, the other has a fair amount of parking. So we needed signs to differentiate the entrances for guests.

Also, it is not intuitive where the front door of our house is. So we had a sign made for that, too.

We had to match some existing wooden signs that said "gates swing out".

So I found someone on Etsy and he designed and painted them , on wood. I like them a lot, but I would not recommend him as he made them cream instead of white and I had to send them back for him to redo.

I am sure you can find another person on Etsy.

Good luck!

Hobby Lobby has metal signs of all types. One I like for solicitors is "If you do not know me, you are trespassing" It is a sign with great detail and looks a bit rusted. None of these work 100%. I want to ask people who knock if they cannot read? Most of the time I don't even answer the door, especially if there is no car driven in.

I have never put a "Beware of Dog" out. It does seem like an open invitation for someone to abuse the situation and could make both you and your dog vulnerable.

I just drew out a picture of a dog standing on a headless body; the bodyâÂÂs hand holds a briefcase with âÂÂsalesâ written across it. The dog has the severed head hanging from his mouth. Is that too graphic lol?
This is just a quick rough sketch but I think you could kill two birds with one stone. No words needed and no miscommunication or language barriers. Hehehe!

This post was edited by jterrilynn on Wed, Sep 4, 13 at 22:51

Jterrilyn - that is too funny!! You are really talented.

Emagineer, my husband loved to ask people that and the answer always was 'but I'm not selling anything'...right before they went into their memorized selling spiel. My husband just closed the door on them. We had a small sign at eye level on one of the side windows and you absolutely couldn't miss it unless you were blind. He used to get furious when someone wasn't satisfied that no one came to the door after ringing the bell once, and then went on to ring it two or three times again after no one answered. Most of the time, however, people would see it and walk away. We got our metal sign at Ace Hardware.

We've never worried about dog signs. With two big German Shepherds their barks alone did the job. And two big dog heads suddenly appearing at the front door side windows I'm sure was warning enough. And what's even more fun is when one of us told the dogs to smile...which was a command to bare their teeth.

Which just reminded me...for several weeks someone was throwing food over our fences, as well as other fences up and down our street. Because of the smell we think that someone/s may have been trying to poison our dogs. Thankfully they (as all our dogs are) have been trained to never take food that isn't handed to them by our hand or in their bowls by us.

We did, however, have a big No Trespassing sign on both our front and back gates at that house. We lived on a corner with a field both behind us and next to us (non-street side) and we wanted those signs to be 'in your face'.

If a sign is unobtrusive and rarely, if ever, noticed then what's the point of having a sign?

I always wanted a sign that said "No Trespassing or you will be eaten", but hubby said no. :)

Jenna

Seagrass, your link to French signs cracked me up. Especially the "Chien gentil" = "Dog Gentile"!

Fortunately, the English signs at the bottom were also translated...into English.

Thanks all. JTerrilyn, that would make a lovely sign! It sort of looks like my guy, too!

I appreciate the suggestions. I don't know why I didn't think of just painting my own.

The dog sign would serve various purposes. A big one is as a reminder to contractors. We've been doing a lot of work on our house but for some reason, contractors don't seem to understand "Knock first--there is a dog". (I like to know they're in the yard anyway, instead of just appearing at the bedroom window.) I even put a lock on a gate to deter knockless entering for some landscapers but they climbed it. They were in an area protected from dog by a small picket fence, but he could have scaled it and done some damage. Another time, some painters had shown up early and failed to knock before going back there and if my ditzy dog had not been obsessed with a squirrel at the time...could have been ugly.

Another reason for the sign is that apparently my dog isn't always on duty (sometimes even when he's THERE) and an additional burglar deterrent would be nice. We returned from a trip once and found a student ID card in our back yard. Nothing was missing or messed up--maybe the kid just spent some time in the pool? I dunno but perhaps he would have avoided the place if he thought there was a dog there. Which there usually is. And we do have a pool and I'd like to discourage strange kids from going in our yard for safety reasons. Drowning and stuff. And I guess bites although I don't know if my dog would bite.

I suppose y'all are right though--the no solicitor sign probably won't do much. I should just be myself and they'll leave on their own.