That sounds awful How do you cope?

It's unreal how many people think it's not their responsibility to ensure their dogs are not affecting their neighbours/the public in general.

I worry even if our dogs are a bit barky (only around bonfire night) because I don't want the neighbours to have to listen to it.

Luckily we don't usually have dogs wandering without owners, but many, many owners use the close as a park (there's one lady who rollerblades around the car park with her beardie every day, doesn't look like much fun for the dog but it's well behaved so I don't mind that at all). They seem to think because it's got a few bits of grass here and there, and there's a small children play area at the top of the close that the whole thing is a park. Dogs frequently run up to and sniff outside our house, we're thinking of fencing in the front a bit just to give us an extra chance to guage the situation once we open the door.
I do usually check outside but last night this dog was right over the other side of the road, and the fog here was unreal yesterday so I didn't see it until I was outside.

I am thinking of the same thing LOL, it drives me batty, I tell some of the nieghbours how I feel and it stops it for a while, there is no real solution so I try to remember I can only control what I do and not others and that works sometimes but other times I feel like them. We are in a cul-de-sac as well and a total of 10 houses are in our street, so it is closer quarters for us, we have a front verandah, so I get a bit of time to gauge what is happening before they make it onto the grass and go down with them. Not ideal but what can you do