When dogs attack...

Yesterday while on a "training" ride with Zack (we're not actually training for anything), we had two separate incidents with dogs, mere moments apart. I'm not going to go into my rant about ignorant dog owners (in both cases they were watching idly as their dogs attacked us), but what I found interesting about the whole experience was the vast differences in techniques for ridding ones self of the attackers. When the first dog started chasing me I just yelled and jammed. The theory behind this method being that most dogs can't maintain 32mph for as long as I can. It works when you have a jump on the dog. When the second dog attacked, it did so from the front. I was watching behind me for the previous attacker and all of a sudden I heard a bark up ahead. This time I jumped off my bike and used it as a shield between me and the angry dog. This was effective because I could keep backing away from the dog until it lost interest. Fortunately for me Zack rode by seconds later and the dog took off after him. His reaction was to kick limply at the dog with his toe while struggling with his water-bottle. He later explained that he was going to throw the water bottle and hope the dog would chase it. In any case the owner, realizing that neither of us were going without a fight eventually called his dog, allowing us to roll on unscathed. I think it was a good thing for Zack because I'm not so sure the dog wasn't about to lose patience with Zack and bite his foot off. We finished our ride with all of our digits intact, but I was wondering what we could have done differently. Any suggestions?