Assuming that interest rates will rise is bad IMO. Actually, assuming any direction in the future just keeps you biased and not open minded. The reality is that nobody knows where interest rates will go in the future. They could be up, down or flat 5 or even 10 years from now. Look at Japan's interest rates the past 25 years. Did anybody predict they would be this low? Scores of traders assuming that Japan's interest rates "had to rise" have been carried out of the pits since the '90s with no money left after their shorts were run over by the market.
A bond fund is there to diversify your portfolio. It is not correlated with stocks yet offers a return stream through interest payments and possible price appreciation. Nobody can predict the future so saying that interest rates have to go 'here,' therefore I'm going to buy 'this,' is silly. Either just buy a total bond market fund, create your own, or make your own bond ladder and hold it in a weight that goes by your investment policy. For active funds, I like Gundlach so I'll recommend the DoubleLine Total Return fund. He doesn't seem to be as hard headed as Bill Gross these days, although accounting for manager risk Gundlach could end up the same way in the future.