What if...

...in all the things we considered in buying this house, we ended up in a "no dog neighborhood?!"

While Thomas and I are not ready or excited about buying a dog just yet, some incidents that have occurred while dogsitting for two friends' dachschunds have made us ask this question.
At 6:45 this morning, we let out the two dogs so they could go to the bathroom, sniff the morning air and generally just enjoy being a dog on a beautiful fall morning. Well, apparently they were a little too exuberant (read: barking a lot) and we got into trouble for this. Someone who lives in the apartments behind our wooded buffer took it upon himself to scream out the window that he was sleeping and the dogs were annoying him. Hearing a (cranky!)voice out of the trees was startling, but we quickly picked up the dogs and hurried them inside. About 30 seconds later, our sleepy and slightly disheveled next door neighbor rang our doorbell to inform us that his bedroom is on the corner and that the dogs have woken him up on the last two mornings. He was very nice about it, which made it all the more embarrassing to us.

We certainly did not blame either of the disgruntled people for being, well, disgruntled about the volume and quantity of dog barks, but in considering the lack of dogs around us, Thomas and I are a little nervous about what will happen when we do want a dog.