The Bell Curve:

As I write this, my dog, Gia, is barking up a storm. She is doing this because my next-door neighbor, Bill, is outside our common fence rolling his trash cans and mine to the street for collection tomorrow. He takes them out, I bring them in. We have been doing this for many years, even though we belong to different political parties.

Gia observes this model example of neighborliness with stern suspicion. As a result, she has raised hell on every trash day since she joined my family almost three years ago.

And if I am sure of anything — that the Angels will lose in the playoffs if they draw Tampa Bay, for example, or that John McCain will face down evil wherever and whenever he encounters it — it would be that Gia will bark next Tuesday night when Bill takes out the trash again.

She will not bark very long, only long enough to establish her ownership of the ground he is violating. Then she will quit, pleased at her performance.

The barking may last only two or three minutes, but it will assuredly be “audible beyond the boundaries” of my property. And under the ordinance the Costa Mesa City Council just passed, that could cost me a bundle every week that some non-dog owner reported it.

No, I don’t have to be reminded that I don’t live in Costa Mesa. I’m writing this because I want to take a stand with dog owners who find the terms of this ordinance excessive. And also as a preemptive strike in case Newport Beach is considering similar action.

What this kind of draconian approach does is to turn what could and should be a compromise over a sticky issue into a totally divisive one that separates the community into two camps: dog owners and the rest of the world.

I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by dog owners, and we tolerate one another’s fractious pets as we do visiting hyper-active children who need a little tough love to become civilized. Dog owners don’t look kindly on excessive barking. But we don’t — or at least this one doesn’t — look kindly on excessive punishment, either.