I hear you Rover! Once I had to defend myself from 3 feral dogs. I had my big knife and that saved my bacon, I broke the spine of the leader and the other two run away. One thing that chilled my blood was that none of them barked, not even once. They just came at me at full speed. I was wearing high boots (because of the snakes) and I had rolled my jacket around my left arm, so I was unharmed.