Dog lovers are ‘liking’ the Daily News story from this week about members of the Rocky Mountain Rangers recently saving an injured border collie cross from death in a wooded area near Williams Lake.

Cpl. Chilco, as they’ve named the dog, had a broken jaw and would have likely starved to death if not for their intervention when they discovered him while driving around on the last day of their training exercises.

They’ve passed the hat to cover the cost of veterinary bills, while clinic staff have donated their time and they’ve received some hefty discounts since one of the animal health techs is girlfriend to one of the rangers.

It’s the kind of story that generates a bunch of ‘likes’ on our Facebook site, and happy comments on our website.

But not all was wagging-tail endings for dogs in Kamloops this week.

Two pit bulls face the death penalty for an unprovoked attack on a 19-year-old man that left him with cuts and puncture wounds.

Those dogs are owned by a homeless man — a man who can’t possibly meet the City’s requirements of a securely fenced area, extra insurance and beefed-up licence fee, because he has no yard, no money and no address here.

And so those dogs are doomed, although their 24-year-old owner claims this was their first offence.

He was digging around in a dumpster when they went after the other man — they may have been acting out of a sense of protection, or from some other trigger. We’ll never know.

Those dogs are unlikely to get a second chance, or maybe even an opportunity to be re-homed if their owner was willing to give them up.

Where people will willingly donate to an injured dog abandoned in the wilderness, they are unlikely to give for man-attacking pit bulls belonging to a vagrant.

But this isn’t really an issue about money as much as it is about people feeling safe around these animals.

Boiled down, however, it’s about dog owners taking the responsibility to teach their animals how to behave well around people. Cpl. Chilco wasn’t about to bite anyone — he couldn’t, his jaw was broken. The pit bulls, for whatever reason, are now seen as a threat to humans. That, unfortunately, is enough to put them on death row.