There are people who love dogs and are willing to put up with nearly anything their darling pet does.

There are people who don't like dogs and would just as soon shoot one, whether or not its tail was wagging.

On the other hand, there are dogs that don't like people no matter how friendly the person is, and there are dogs that literally will lick a person half to death.

Trouble is, it's very hard to tell the difference, either among people or among dogs. At least, it's hard to tell in the time you have between action and reaction.

There are Lassie stories and Ol' Shep songs. There are also people on trial for manslaughter when their Rotweiler kills the little old lady next door. My own story is that I've been bitten once in my life by a dog. It wasn't one of the so-called bad breeds; it was a Pekinese, and I bled like a stuck pig, plus the tetanus shot cost $70.

In light of all this, it is tough to advise the Leitchfield City Council on the wording of a "dog ordinance."

They can't look at the County Fiscal Court's recent sally into this fray. The magistrates came out with a tough proposed ordinance, tabled it, then came back with a watered down version, tabled that, then came back and finally passed a resolution (This dog won't bite!) that barely upholds the weak leash law they had in the first place.

Chalk one up for the Ol' Shep faction, despite the fact of over 40 reported bites in the county in the previous year.

It seems the county made the same mistake that's being made all over the country. Namely, they named the breeds that are "bad." Dog lovers hate this; they say it simply paints with too wide a brush. It's like saying all brown-eyed people are thieves, and they have a point.

In its deliberations, the city council made the same mistake in its first foray into this hornet's nest. They have backed off a bit since then, now simply hanging the ordinance on the "dangerous dog" nail. That means a dangerous dog can be a Pit Bull or one that looks just like Lassie or Ol' Shep.

That still leaves a huge problem. How do you know whether or not a dog's dangerous? Well, it's simple. It's a dog that has bitten somebody. Won't work, unless the city's going to hire somebody to go around and get bitten, which is a job that will get very few applications.

This approach leaves the city with a law that says the first bite's free. If Ol' Shep, at age 15, whose been a model dog destined for dog heaven, decides to chomp down on some school child waiting for the school bus...

Well, the city finds itself in the awkward position of drafting an ordinance that prevents the first bite, an ordinance that lets people of any age walk down a city sidewalk on any morning without having to deal with a set of fangs backed up by snarls, growls and barking.

Such an ordinance may be impossible to write unless the council zeros in on dog owners instead of the dogs. And even that's no guarantee.

A recent 4-3 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court found that a dangerous dog ordinance that named breeds and required dog owners to get insurance was unconstitutional. The court said the ordinance didn't give the dog owners a chance to appeal to an administrative hearing where the dangerous dog designation could be challenged. The court defined a dog as property.

A lot of dog owners think their dogs are a lot more than that, some putting them on qual footing with people and a few putting them above most of the people they know.

And a city has to consider enforcement of an ordinance. Without the enforcement, the city could be liable for serious dog attacks, thus the inclusion of owner-funded insurance in most dog ordinances. Enforcement, though, costs money -- taxpayer's money -- and people who don't have dogs see this money as a subsidy to the dog folk. If insurance can be required on a vehicle, it seems it could be required on a dog if, in the eyes of the law, both are property.

There have been three outstanding dogs in my life among the nearly dozen I've owned. Two of them were pretty good dogs, but the third one was pretty much a loser. The loser was an Irish Setter that was too stupid and jittery to qualify for any kind of bragging.

This big red dog had been bred to the point its head wasn't big enough to allow a brain of the proper size to register and any kind of training. We could let this dog into the large back yard, but it confused acorns and dog food. And no matter how many walks and runs this dog enjoyed, it never got past its greatest joy in life -- going around the coffee table umpteen times, day and night, requiring new carpet too often.

I went through the boy and his dog routine with a Spitz named Pogo. His property lines didn't always coincide with mine, though, and he tried to protect his space. He must have tried to hard, because he disappeared. I never found a body.

Spot, the Dalmatian, knew his territory, marked it often. His boundary patrols killed the rose bushes, killed the petunias, killed young trees. Spot was in a fenced yard, but meter readers and mail carriers were his nemesis. I had to put a mailbox on the gatepost of the chain-link fence around the yard after the postman said he wouldn't deliver the mail anymore. The meter readers got binoculars.

All of it convinced me that the relationship between man and dog has changed over the centuries. Early on, it was a working relationship with both roles well understood.

But, the world's changed. Owners live too close, are too busy and must think about too much to have any time left for the old human-dog relationship. The dogs don't know this. They wait to contribute to the team in some way, but the way never gets spelled out.

The result is dogs that are first bored, then depressed, then just mean. They aren't made to live on concrete or carpet or at the end of a chain. When they smell good to us, they stink to themselves. Nothing in their genetic make-up prepares them to hang on to a toolbox in the back of a truck traveling 65 MPH.

Packs have turned into gangs, and the toll on wildlife and domestic animals is heavy. The toll on people is getting more worrisome, too. Hence, dog ordinances that require dog owners to give some, those who fear dogs to give some, and dogs to give the most. Nobody likes compromise.