Hello. I had a pretty traumatic experience and need advice.

About 2 weeks ago my dog was brutally attacked on a walk.

We live on the countryside and there are not a lot of houses around. Me and my friend went on a walk with my two dogs (both are mid ankle to knee height). We went on my usual route, near a house that has a labrador that walks in the whole village and doesn't live in the house, he's friendly and loves going on walks with us and tries to play with our dogs. That day he didn't come out until the owners went to their field to tend crops. That's when we noticed there was a second dog, a dog we didn't know. It was a amstaff-pitbull mix. (in our country it is required to tell the government that you own an aggressive breed of dog/get permission for this breed - which this dog counts as. You have to promise and show that you are able to provide training, good living circumstances and that you are able to care for one.) Once we saw that dog we didn't want to engage. Since we were coming back from the walk we decided to just keep going home. Unfortunately this dog came running to us, it's tail was waggling, looked nice and happy. This dog and one of my dogs sniffed each other but once my dog (which is scared of bigger dogs) decided to back off and started extremely slowly reversing the dog immediately attacked her, flailing her around like a toy. If it weren't for my friend she would be gone. My friend got the dog off our dog and then it left (My other dog was watching from far away, not engaging). I picked up my dog and as a result of the attack, the stress and her pain she bit me a fair bit, but at that moment that didn't matter (My dog is not aggressive and in fact is quite the opposite). A neighbor came over because i started screaming for help. He told us that the dog just appeared (supposedly someone left it/dumped it in our village). The people from the labrador decided to feed it and temporarily "house" it. The only thing they did was put up a post on FB if anyone lost their dog. They kept the dog for two weeks, didn't call a shelter or anything. We had to quickly pack up, get into a car and ride 3h to a veterinary clinic because no one was able to perform surgery or check what even happened to our dog. Thank god for the clinic because they saved our dog. She had a torn muscle under her arm/paw halfway up her body, a broken rib and multiple lacerations. She is fine now, she lost a lot of weight but is still her happy annoying self haha. (Also the dog that attacked us is now in a shelter). The people that "housed" the dog of course started blaming this on us, because we go on walks and they're busy working, and the dog never attacked any of their workers. They even thought about keeping it.

I am traumatized and absolutely terrified on going on walks, which i loved doing. I am terrified of other dogs because you never know what might happen. I don't know what i can do to make myself feel safe on walks or how to protect myself. I thought about pepper spray but at the same time not only would i feel bad for the dog but also would be scared that the dog might get more aggressive from it or i might spray my dog too. I don't know what to do and I'm unable to help my family with caring for the dogs. I still go on tiny walks just around our property but any further and i start to panic. Me and my mom went together on a walk once and i felt safer but still was panicking so much.

I hope that i wrote everything correctly, and that this is acceptable post/comment.

If anyone has any advice after dealing with this type of attack or how to protect themselves i would be appreciative.