Could you take a living animal and put it in a hibernation/cryo state. Alive but inactive.
Sounds like a ritual to take the creature out. Not sure how you would then train/compel it to patrol the grounds when triggered.
Another thought if you didn't have any magical compulsion on the creature when it awoke would you be breaking the first law if it killed someone?
Why not? Use biomancy to slow it's metabolism down to just barely above zero or "lull its predator spirit to sleep." Cancel the spell, it reawakens. If you're going to use it as a guardian, that'd require a psychomantic take-out (unless you train it mundanely). That's moving into weird territory for a wizard (animal control), and I wouldn't allow one to control an animal in such a way unless it was a big part of the character, and included in their High Concept or another aspect.
No, a freaked-out animal waking up from magic hibernation and killing someone has nothing to do with magic. If it's being magically compelled to attack someone and the target is killed, though? Yeah, I'd say that's a 1st Law issue.
