Dogs had mixed reception prior and in tangent to the christian bible, being seen to represent human traits both the negative ones the bible lists with hostility of them as greedy, useless, lazy with a bestial and impure nature and stories of them eating vomit and licking puss filled wounds.

Yet other texts from this same period will describe them in praise on their human traits faithfulness, loyalty and connection to the divine (not necessarily christianity).Other examples include such as the Naturalis Historia in 77AD by Pliny the Elder who makes it clear in no uncertain terms they are a faithful animal worthy of praise and referenced their intelligence. This is also reflected in the Bible - the Faithful Dog Tob 11, showing a reflection of the view on dogs not wholly in stone. Dogs were frequently also placed upon tombs as an example of faithfulness and loyalty in these time periods.

This variation of attributes on dogs does also vary based geographical religion, time and place yet I think it worth to note quite a few of the races most predominantly referred to in the bible each developed their own breeds of dogs (Romans, Egyptians (notably despite their association with death) and the Babylonians).

Sophia Menache in her essay Dogs: God's Worst Enemies has proposed this was an concentrated goal of the early church fathers, building upon the idea of humanity's superiority over beasts as dictated by god with a specific intention through these works to weaken the relationship between humans and dogs. Sophia argues that a positive regard of dogs is in competition with relationship and faithfulness to god and it does seem to support the disparity in how dogs were regarded in works of the same time period when in religious context it was near exclusively negatively, yet not so in the context of family tombs, other literary works and in art.

(Of side note, Sophia does not contain her essay to just Christianity but compares and contrasts to Pagan, Jewish and Muslim views, specifically on the hostile view to dogs. You may enjoy this essay, it is very interesting and is primarily focussed on how people seeked to maintain the hostile status of dogs as bad)

Sophie Oosterwijk talks on the contribution of dogs in their divided portrayal in their status in art and the changing of meaning. Originally statues would be developed where the people stood upon animals as both a heraldic emblem and footrest motif. There was not an identify consensus on the original choice behind the design, some have suggested it is intended reminiscent of dog's behaviour to rest at our feet. Other's suggest the original design was more for the practicality of having memorial statues in a standing position in life and an animal is much more appealing than a mound of grass. Or for a reason no longer remembered that the memorial statues would be standing on their pets (as many times these footrest dogs would have name labels beside them, indicating a bond or service of sort and not necessarily an act of aggression).

She also discusses footrests as the loss of their original meaning have an interesting intersection with how these footrests are used to different effect by the clergy of the church. Where the footrests previously described are considered to be in a faithful manner, christianity was filled with allegories on trampling the beasts and evil underfoot. e.g. Psalm 91 verse 13 "...thou shalt trample underfoot the lion and the dragon" - this phrase despite how otherwise well praised the lions are in the christian bible. There is potential this allegorical symbolism of trampling beasts underfoot have shaped how the bible's words and terms were formed. For example the artwork of Sir Roger de Trumpington in Trumpington as he tramples a dog attacking his sword.

Sophie Oosterwijk referred there was thought to these artworks as an artistic reminder to christians to vanquish evil not only through trampling the lions and dragons, but the entire bestiary of animals.

We can see this proposed status for dogs did not stick, as Christianity did eventually start to see a change from "bad dogs" to "good dogs". There is the Golden Legend of St Roche, the christian patron saint of dogs. The meaning of dogs being trampled at the feet shifted to become "loyalty beyond death" and most notably in the 13th century the artists of the Morgan Old Testament Picture Book including dogs as positive pictorials in their artwork (Alexa Sand "And your little dog too" goes into a intriguing essay on the addition of a dog in the romance of the old testament story on King David's marriage to Michal)