I've had very little success in hanging my packs.  I never seem to get the right combination of trees to make it work.  Alas . . .  :-/  I have usually taken my food pack and put it under my canoe, placing the cleaned cookpots and dishes on the bottom of the canoe to "dry" overnight.  Had the canoe tipped once and the racket of the clanging dishes spooked Mr. Bruin and woke me up, enough to make enough noise to shoo him off.  But a persnickety or tenacious bear would probably get my food anyway, under a canoe or in a tree.  I'm intrigued by the personal alarm method and might consider adding that to the "canoe method" arsenal.

As for the pleasantness of bears north or south, I live my not BW/Q life in Pennsylvania where bears are close to outnumbering humans these days.  A black bear in the 600-900 pound range is not unheard of.  In fact, I have seen multiple 600+ bears in the last few weeks on the mosey for fattening.  Those were sows.  I saw an 800+ garbage bear last Saturday.  Lying on his side and scratching on a tree next to a busy highway, he was at least 6 1/2 feet tall.  Lots of Jersey and NYC lookey-loos had gotten out of their cars for a gander.  Not smart with a garbage-fed, grizzly-sized black bear who doesn't give a rip about humans or their cars.

Anwyay, as for dogs and bears.  My experience has been:  keep your dog and bears far apart.  If my dog is barking and outside at night around here, the dog comes in and gets the muzzle.  I know of more than one person who's dog's barking has pissed the bear off and they wound up with a dead or severly-wounded pup.  If your dog's not leashed, they often will get bold (read: Stupid Dog Syndrome) and chase them only to wind up as I mentioned before.

Dogs might be a good alarm in the BW/Q or north, but they are more of a hazard than a help IMO; even though I love to have them with me, I choose a kennel or friend to pet them while I'm away.