When I was a kid, every dog "ran loose", even the "mean ones". If your front yard was fenced you would have been some kind of anti-social weirdo.
I didn't see pitbulls when I was a kid. (I'm in my 50s BTW.) Our dogs didn't always stay in the yard, but they did mostly. They didn't put up with other dogs coming into their yard. These things got worked out by the dogs. Not the humans.
I was bit by a dog once when I was 16. I passed this "mean dog" every day and every day it would come into the alley and charge and growl and I would stop still and talk to it, and then it went back into it's yard. The dog never became friendly, or wagged his tail, he just never attacked me. This went on for years.
Then one day the mean dog didn't stop charging and he bit me on my thigh. I was stunned. The magic was over. Come to find out, a big male teenaged friend of mine walked that same path everyday and swung a big stick whenever he came near the dog. Sort of raised the level of antagonism.
The dog bit me hard enough that I remembered it real well, but he didn't set on me with the intent to rip me to shreds. Dogs will naturally defend what they know to be their master's but property boundaries in the human sense are meaningless to dogs. They move on what they perceive to be necessary to create their turf and their defence. That's why I was bit on a public alleyway and why I never bothered the "mean dog". A simple dog bite was my tough luck and a lesson. I had to change my route because the dog had decided against me.
I remember seeing dogs with part of their ears torn off from dog fights. I never heard of a dog getting killed or suffering any life-threatening injuries from another dog.
A dog that viciously attacked humans simply wouldn't be allowed to live, unless it was a guard dog on some fenced and patrolled industrial site. Nobody kept dogs like that as pets. A dog that savaged other dogs wouldn't have been allowed to live.
Now we have dogs fenced in yards or worse, living in apartments, who never roam or sniff or work out their turf with the neighbor's dogs. And we keep dogs that would kill as pets.
Times have changed.
I have had all sorts of dogs, all my life.
When I was 8, I was at a friend's house. I had been there countless times. One day, while we were playing with his great dane, he was called in the house by his mom.
Once I was by myself with the dane, he seemed agitated. Not concerned, I didn't pay much attention when it was me he was growling at. Until he grit his teth and barked loudly at me.
I got up and began to run away. He chased me down and bit my back, drawing blood. He knoclked me to the ground and was only prevented frominjuring me more because I kicked the crap out of him as he lunged. My friend came out with his mom and draged the dog off me.
I had upper teeth mark near my neck and lower teeth half way down my back.
I said that to say this, dogs are dogs, and must be handled responsibly. I did not fear all dogs, and I did not feel all danes are killers, but I learned all dogs must be kept in control by someone capable of controlling them.
By all dogs, I mean all dogs, except Poms. Poms should be attached to a broom handle and used for mops, right, Clint?
BTW, Petey on the original Little Rascals was a Pitbull/AmStaff. They have been a recognized breed in the U. S> for about 100 years.