You're right--my dogs walk 30-45 minutes in the morning every day, more if the weather is nice in the evening. When it isn't too hot they also wear dog backpacks with a couple of bottles of water in each. This not only gives them time with me and a look around the neighborhood, it gives them a job, and that is what all dogs need, big or small.
When my dogs bark at night the only one they're liable to wake up is me, because my bedroom window overlooks the back. My neighbors on either side sleep in rooms in the front side of their houses. (No, they didn't move there because my dogs bark!)
I had the unusual experience of being roared at yesterday, in an odd sort of way, by a guest of my next door neighbor. Seems she watches Cesar Millan's Dog Whisperer, but she hasn't exactly "got it" as far as dog behavior within their own packs. I told her not to walk up to my dogs because they both like people but one of them still jumps on people. What does she do? She walks right up, perfect posture and tense as can be and when Poppy jumps, she roars "Sit!" The woman was quite pleased with herself that, like Cesar, she can make dogs sit immediately, but what she was missing entirely that while all three of us were at first startled by her antics, I stepped back and stood calmly, essentially ignoring her odd behavior, and the dogs take their cue from the humans they know, who are in their own pack. So they sat there because of how I handled their leashes (slack, no anxiety being transmitted), because I wanted them to, and as my neighbors discussed all that they'd learned on the program and gestured and shouted and demonstrated between themselves and for me, my dogs just sat there. Because of the way I was reacting. I would never walk up to someone else with their dog and start ordering their animal around. When I meet neighbors with dogs on the street and they're having a problem with their dog straining towards mine, I have suggested walking upright and not yanking the leash and "ignoring" us. It does work, but it is up to that person to try it (they just need to mimic us, that's what I do when I pass their dogs, and mine are usually very good at ignoring other animals--all except cats and wild rabbits).