A dog is a better alarm than nothing, but he can't call the cops or the fire department when you are not there.
I vote for a good quality electronic system with fire and maybe freeze protection built in, remote monitoring, and cell phone option in case your phone wires are cut ( a common burglar MO these days). panic buttons are also a good idea.
Many local and a couple national alarm companies do a decent monitoring job. The real money for a lot of them is not in the hardware, it is in the monitoring.
I don't think there is any real difference in the security of a local or remote central station, although many alarm companies tout the value of not having a local central station. The logic of their thinking about this never really impressed me much though.
Most small local alarm companies contract the monitoring to someone else anyway. It takes a lot of alarm contracts to make it cost effective to get a UL listed central station built.