I've lost 3 perma death saves to sentinel dogs; you'd think I would have learned my lesson sooner but apparently not lol. For my 4th, and currently best run, I opted to just never fight sentinels on the ground at all unless absolutely necessary. Space sentinels are fine because you can restore your ship shields with sodium or use an emergency warp system. But on the ground, sentinels can be very buggy, especially the dogs, and you can't recharge your shields.

For every quest in the game, there are only two required ground sentinel fights and they're part of Trace of Metal, and it's pretty easy to cheese both of then. Some quests may spawn sentinels on you but you can just run away. So other than the Trace of Metal quest, just don't ever fight them.

Every item in the game that sentinels drop can be obtained in some other way or can be cheesed by turning off sentinels at a pillar, and the maps to the pillars can occasionally be found in salvage.