WATCHING her dog die after it swallowed a bait containing crushed glass was one of the last straws for a Dubbo woman fed up with crime who was planning to give notice to her real estate agent and leave the city as soon as possible.

The woman, who prefers to be known only as Stacey, said she had lived in numerous towns and cities across NSW but none had left her so frightened to sleep at night as Dubbo did.

"I moved into a house in Dubbo at the end of June and on the second night I was in there someone tried to break into my back door," she said.

"In that same week eggs were thrown at the side of my house.

"Two weeks later I found an intruder in my driveway.

"Just this last weekend I had someone try to get into my laundry and it seems as if the dog interrupted them because they didn't quite get in.

"I think whoever is doing it has worked out our routines, when we are and aren't at home. I think they often do that."

The heartbreaking loss of Stacey's dog was ironic as she had purchased him hoping he might not just be a beloved pet but grow into a guard dog.

"He was a Dane bull Arab I bought after the trouble I had when I first moved in, I was thinking he might be a deterrent to intruders, but he only got to live to be twelve weeks old," she said.

"They smashed up a light globe, put it inside some meat and fed it to him.

"He got sick and I didn't know what was wrong. He just seemed to have given up on life, I found him just laying in the middle of the yard in the rain.

"That was in August. I would have taken him to the vet to have him put out of his misery if I had known sooner what had happened to him. As it turned out even if I had got him to the vets earlier there was nothing we could have done.

"I found what was left of the bait afterwards."

Stacey said she had no idea why her pet was targeted.

"He was so quiet, my neighbours never even knew I had him," she said.

Stacey said she had tried in earnest to give the city a second chance despite harbouring bad memories from an incident many years prior.

"Before I lived here, I remember visiting Dubbo as a child and even then being intimidated by people who would come up to you on the street," she said.

“Twenty years ago I was given my first ever $20 note and put it in a wallet which was stolen while I was in the (then) Dubbo City Shopping Centre.

“There are locals who think it is a great place. Perhaps they may not have had anything like this happen to them, but the statistics show how much crime there is here.”

While she did not claim to have all the answers, Stacey said there were definitely things wrong with the way things were going in the city.

“There are just so many kids hanging around everywhere with no adults,” she said.

“They’re throwing rocks at cars and going in and out of houses asking for money. And it’s like the parents have figured out if they send their kids out to do the crimes they won’t be punished for it like an adult would.”

And while break-ins and thefts were intrusive and expensive, Stacey said, those incidents prompted other dangers.

“I know of someone who had a gun stolen from Dubbo, a gun that is capable of shooting 200 yards with barely a sound,” she said.