Coffee with a canine: Linda Lombardi & Lilly and Rose

This weekend's featured trio at Coffee with a Canine: Linda Lombardi & Lilly and Rose.

Photo credit: Paul McRae

The author, on each dog's best quality:

Lilly is dangerously clever, opinionated, bossy... oh, you said "best"? Actually, I like those things about her. I like a dog that is a bit of a challenge, one that talks back. We're a good match.

Rose is a perfect complement because no matter how much you love the kind of dog Lilly is, two of her would be a bit much. Here's the difference between Rose and Lilly: When I first got Rose, when I came home, she would actually greet me at the door! Just like everyone else says dogs do! I'd never seen that before. Lilly would lie on the couch and thought it was my job to walk over there and pet her.

Rose will also still come for walks with me most of the time because she thinks that anything I suggest will be fun! Whereas Lilly wants to know exactly...[read on]

About Linda Lombardi's Animals Behaving Badly: Boozing Bees, Cheating Chimps, Dogs with Guns, and Other Beastly True Tales:

There's a lot that animals don't want you to know, and the better their public image, the worse their secrets are: gang-rapist dolphins; lazy, infanticidal lions; and, of course, our own dogs, who eat our money, set our houses on fire, and in more than one case, actually shoot their owners with guns.

Animals Behaving Badly shows that animals are just like us: gluttonous, selfish, violent, lustful, and always looking out for number one. Using anecdotes from the news and from scientific research, Linda Lombardi pokes fun at our softhearted preconceptions about animals, makes us feel a little better about humanity's basest impulses, and painlessly teaches us a bit more about our furry and feathered friends.

You'll learn:

• Bees love alcohol: even, says one researcher, more than college students
• Pandas enjoy pornographic movies-they're particularly aroused by the soundtrack-and macaques will pay with juice to look at dirty pictures
• A rabbit who lives in a pub in England is addicted to gambling with a slot machine
• African elephants raised by teenage mothers form violent youth gangs

Visit the Animals Behaving Badly Blog. To read Linda's newspaper and web writing and sample chapters of The Sloth's Eye, visit her website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Linda Lombardi & Lilly and Rose.

--Marshal Zeringue