You know, we have a lot of stray dogs in Russia, they are not particularly well controlled. Most of the times that is not a problem, but certain times, especially in mating season they can get agressive and dangerous for children for instance. Now some areas are more dog populated (industial areas where people even feed them). I remember having to walk through one of those to get to work years ago. I felt a lot of hostility from a gang of dogs... I tool a good old sling shot and after hitting couple of times the gand the dogs would avoid me instead of me avoiding them, which (avoiding) actually a good idea )))
The thing there though is that you know this and are prepared but we don't often have dogs wandering around here, we have dog wardens to round them up so any dog attack comes out of the blue and people are obviously unprepared for it.