How to survive hound attacks at night?

The way you can deal with hounds highly depends on how many of them are attacking you. Assuming you did not change any settings, early on you'll be getting just a few of them.

Hounds change targets:
If you are near anything they can attack (e.g. Chester, a tentacle, spiders, bee hives etc) they might switch targets after they stop to bark. Just make sure you are far enough when that happens and they'll start attacking something else, giving you time to fight fewer of them.

Just make sure fire hounds dont die and burn something nearby that you need.

Chester in particular can take lots of beating before he dies, so he ll give you enough time to kite and hit them.

Tooth traps:
Later in the game, when you'll be getting 7 hounds or more, you need to have a reliable way to deal with them. Fill an area with tooth traps, place a stone campfire nearby, and make sure you replace the turf with Wooden Flooring to prevent lureplants eating anything that you have there (they could spawn there randomly).

Also, make sure your trap area is not too close to your base, since fire hounds that accidentally die (e.g. a loose pig, or bee) could set everything on fire.

Kiting:
Don't take hits if you can avoid them. If you are chased by a single hound or 2 of them, you can easily let them start their bite animation, then run away to dodge it, and then attack 1-2 times max. Once you master kiting, and get to know how many hits you can deal before getting hit, the game will be much easier.

Fighting on a road/switching to Walking Cane:
When kiting you might be able to get more hits on your target inbetween his attacks, if you run away faster from his reach when he animates his attack. This can be achieved by fighting them on a road, and/or equiping Walking Cane when running to dodge.

Ham bat:
You can hit twice with a spear then must dodge the hound then hit again. 5 hits from spear would kill a hound. With ham bat you only need 3 hits (you don't need to run after the second hit, since there will be no attack to dodge because the hound would die).

Any high damage weapon would help a lot, but ham bat is very easy to make especially later on.

You can check the hits it would take for a hound to die with various weapons here.

If you're in complete darkness the best thing to do is have a torch handy. Equip the torch and run. Keep running and avoiding the dogs' attacks until it's morning. At that point equip your spear (and armour) and attack and kill the dogs. A key strategy is strafing and kiting - get in close, attack, then run away before they have a chance to hit you back. Repeat until they're dead. Further on in the game it might be a good idea to build a panic room - a small area fenced in with stone walls and tooth traps around the entrance. The dogs will run through the traps and get damaged, which will make killing them easier.