Suddenly – those snarling dogs spotted Odysseus,
charged him fast – a shatter of barks – but Odysseus
sank to the ground at once, he knew the trick:
the staff dropped from his hand but here and now,
on his own farm, he might have taken a shameful mauling.
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 14, lines 32-36. When Odysseus goes to visit Eumaeus, he almost gets mauled by the swineherd’s dogs. But Odysseus knows the trick of how to escape unscathed.