carrie, my mental picture of your poor sister, the frenzied dogs and you standing statue still made me giggle, alot! poor sis!
hehehe...
since i live in an apartment, i try very hard to take alex for daily walks of at least 45-60 minutes. i don't have a yard, merely a tie-out, and i won't/don't leave him out there unsupervised for more then 5 minutes. on the weekends or other off days, we go for a longer walk or a park for some serious sniffing, running and marking. there are a couple of large flat parks near here where we practice off leash recalls and he runs around sniffing everything. i'm planning on buying a house in the near future and as part of the neighborhood check, we'll walk the neighborhood first!