Etymology of the Word "Bitch"

If one could find a word in the English language to be more strangely and oddly used than bitch, please let me know as soon as possible. Encompassing meanings that date back from the year 1000 A.D., it has been used to describe totally unrelated things. How did society manage to distort and skew the meaning of a word to change from referring to an animal to demeaning a person?
It is not very common nowadays to hear someone refer to his cute little female pet as a bitch. However, this was the original meaning for it. …