it seems no matter where i live, there is at least one house on my walk route that has live 15 barking dogs.
One house has 2 chow mixes, a pit mix and 5 little dogs of various rat terrier or something a-poo mixes.
They are behind a fence, but it is a short fence, and the kids there do leave the gate open at times.

I have to brag here, my dogs, even Bart, are EXTREMELY well behaved when we pass this house, sometimes we go by and my dogs don't even glance at these snarling lunging dogs.

So, more often than not, the owners are out there, sitting on the porch or in the yard, watching this go on. They have watched me have to hang bart when he does decide to not ignore them, and it's pushing it when i get stopped by traffic(it's on an intersection).
I have politely asked them to call their dogs everytime they are out there, and they reply "we cant get them, they won;t listen".
Excuse me? Get your lazy butt off the swinging chair and come get them.
Granted, i know they are "contained", but the owners have not once ever even tried to call the dogs. Ever.

what ever happened to common courtisy?

No courtesy in this town!! (well almost none)

I have this problem as well in my neighborhood, I use this as a great training aid. I'll also put Jake into a sit stay or platz near these dogs. As long as none of the dogs are getting hurt, sometimes the owners get fed up and get their dog or I also get comments about how good my dog is.

Sgt Matt

This is exactly what I was going to say... TRAINING OPPORTUNITY! I will spend 20 minutes in front of a house like that walking back and forth doing sits, platz, and getting my dogs conditioned to ignoring stupidity. The best part about it for me is that the dogs that are left out go nuts and eventually will bother the owners.

Unfortunately the neighbors with the snarling barking lunging dogs behind fences don't see it that way. I had a conversation with my next door neighbor last week about a woman in the neighborhood who walks her two chow-mixes twice a day. She strolls along and lets them sniff and amble along with her. Seems like she always stops in front of the neighbor's house for a minute or two and just stands there with the two dogs (on leash) while neighbor's two big dogs are barking and causing a ruckus behind the fence. Neighbor said to me that she is going to tell the woman to not stop in front of her house like that or she will call the police and say that they are harrassing her dogs!

The folks mentioned by the OP sound like idiots who deserve to have their place and dogs used as a training opportunity, but there is another 'side of the fence' to be considered when the dog owners are NOT idiots:

Our yard is fenced, and our dogs WILL bark and act aggressively when the fence is approached. We kinda like it that way. It's private enough that you'd have to go out of your way to get to our yard. There is no chance they'll get out, and they are never left unsupervised. There is a couple that lives nearby that thinks it's a brilliant idea to use our back yard/dogs to train their lab with distractions. It makes our dogs crazy, and it's completely unfair to them. The 'lab people' said if we didn't like it, we could bring our dogs inside...HA!! Why should we cater to them on OUR PROPERTY? We've forbidden them to use our yard, even going so far as to file a complaint. They hang out next to our fence working on OB commands, walk back and forth over and over again, etc while our dogs get more and more frustrated. We HAVE called them in when it looks to go on awhile, but these folks live nearby and it seems they watch for when the dogs are out so they can do their thing. Just something to consider when working out training opportunities involving other peoples' dogs and yards: Not everyone who has dogs barking in a fenced yard is an idiot or training opportunity. I know that the situation described here is a little different, but I still felt it necessary to make the distinction.

Same here, I am happy that the dogs are secure because we run into to many loose ones with the owners not caring. Unfortunatly I feel sorry for most of these dogs, they are stuck in the house, tied up or fenced in a yard. I never see them get walked, there is a husky pup on the next block that is either crated in the garage, in the house or tied up in the backyard (they have no fence) has to be going nuts not having any freedom to run. From talking to people when the dogs get crazy they take them to one of these 6 week training clases and expect them to be fixed after that. When we are in the yard and Zeus starts barking at the fence, I can refocus him with his ball back to me and call him over.

Just to clarify, I would never go off of public property when doing this (i.e. the sidewalk). If the Lab people are going off the sidewalk to purposely do this I do not agree with them. If your dogs are barking like that when a dog gets walked by on the sidewalk, then it is what it is and the dogs need to be secured elsewhere.

yes, their fence touches the sidewalk, so it's not lie i could go in their yard. The sidewalk is totally public property, so yeah.

Since the complaint was filed, the 'lab people' now do their thing just over the property line....about eight feet away....and there's nothing we can do about that. It IS harassment, without question. Our dogs get walked daily, get off-leash time and training in a private field and will come off the fence when asked. Sometimes we have a pregnant female out there or a bitch with a litter and don't want them harassed. They don't deserve the daily harassment of these people and their dog, just because these folks have an entitlement issue and no common courtesy. We are in the process of building a six-foot wooden privacy fence, two of the three sides of the yard (the forth side is house) are completed, so these folks make sure to lurk beyond what's left of the chain-link. It's very expensive, and it really steams me that it had to come to that. I think if someone has bothered with the time and expense of installing a fence to contain their dogs, they are showing much more responsibility than someone who's dog is wandering around the neighborhood. There is a responsibility to be courteous when out with your dog. This means keeping control, cleaning up messes, and not causing upset just because you can and it's helpful to YOU. No dog deserves purposeful harassment, even if their owner IS a jerk. Just because something is legally okay, doesn't mean it's right. I realize it's a touchy spot for me, but I wouldn't do it to anyone. When I walk by fenced yards with dogs, I just walk calmly past and ignore them; I don't purposefully egg them on by lingering.