What would you do (predatory dogs)?

I had an interesting experience last night. I live in a very rural area. Every night I take my dogs two dogs on about a two mile walk. I have a German Shepard and a Blue Heeler, so they are both fairly large dogs. It's usually really quiet and we're lucky to even see anyone.During the winter farmers bring sheep to the fields near my house, with the sheep generally come a handful of Great Pyrenees sheep dogs. Last night one of these dogs stalked me, my wife, my dogs for almost a mile basically until we walked into our front door. These dogs are huge and generally pretty mean. The farmers keep them to deter predators from the sheep. Generally they stay close to the sheep but one of them this year is a wanderer.About a mile from my house this dog came flying out of some bushes and tried to grab my Shepard. I hit it with a rock and it backed off a little bit. My wife took the dogs and started walking faster and I hung back to keep some space between my dogs and it. I walked about a hundred yards and the dog kept following us, so I bent down to grab another rock to hit it with and it decided to charge me.I hit with baseball sized rock and it backed off again and I pulled out my weapon because up until this point I thought the dog just wanted to get at my dogs and not myself.For the rest of the walk home. I just watched the dog closely and he stayed about 15 yards away. I had my pistol out and debated just shooting into the field to see if it would scare it off.So the question is what do you do about this? Normally, I would just avoid going down the roads where the farmers keep sheep, but this dog was no where near the sheep. I've seen it outside my fence and the small park by my house. I could probably get the sheriff involved and get the farmer a fine or something but I don't think it's really going to change anything, the dog is doing to be somewhere near my house until the sheep are gone.I've thought about starting to carry bear spray or something in our walks, but my wife feels that is a little excessive. If you have any thoughts i would appreciate the input. I don't want to get into a circumstance where I have to shoot a dog for doing it's job, but I'm also not willing to keep my dogs locked in my house for the whole winter either. via /r/CCW https://ift.tt/3nT0xVh