ohmidog!

A  police dog named Serge died of “heat exhaustion” last week after an alarm system failed to alert his handler that the air conditioner had malfunctioned in the car he’d been left in, police in Camden, N.J., said Monday.

“Most of the electrics went out. And the air conditioner, instead of cooling the vehicle, was pulling all the heat from the engine. [The dog] probably went in like 10 minutes,” said Joe Rodriguez, supervising trainer at the Atlantic County K-9 Academy in Egg Harbor Township, told the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Apparently, both the air conditioner and heat alarm failed, Rodriguez said. Rodriguez who trained the German shepherd and his handler, said the alarm is designed to set off a siren and roll down the vehicle’s windows when the temperature inside rises too high.

The dog was found dead in the vehicle, parked outside police headquarters in downtown Camden. The temperature that day, Thursday, reached a high of 92 degrees.

“We still have much more investigating to do before we determine causes and issue conclusions,” Police Chief Scott Thomson said.

The death of police dogs from heat exhaustion — often while they are waiting in cars — has been an all-too frequent occurence across the country this summer.

“It has been a problem with some law enforcement due to malfunctioning equipment, some of it due to human error,” said Russell Hess, national director of the U.S. Police Canine Association. “We usually hear about it every summer.”

Rodriguez, who trains K-9 officers from all over New Jersey, said he recommends that handlers check their dogs every 20 minutes — even when their vehicles are equipped with heat alarms.

“They’re like anything else. They can be hit or miss,” he said. “You get a false sense of security.”

Serge, not quite two-years-old, joined the Camden police force in January.

“He had already captured a bank robbery suspect and had assisted in several other apprehensions as well,” said Chief Thomson.

The color for today, courtesy of the state of Maine, is red.

There has been no avoiding it since Saturday, when we made our way from Portland to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park amid a dazzling array of fall colors.

Nearly every town we went through was sporting red. Yellow and orange, too, but red seemed to be the dominant hue.

Leaves, vines, shrubs, stop signs and cars, barns and sunsets all seemed to be vying for the honor of reddest red.

Apple Fests were underway, and roadside stands stood ready with rows of baskets, filled with red and green apples. At every turn, it seemed, I encountered flashes of red.

Even when I stopped for lunch — and ordered my first lobster roll — the fluffy white meat had red running through it. I sat outside under crisp skies, at a red picnic table, as Ace sat at my side and drooled.

Just across the street sat a red pickup truck, under a tree that was putting its best red forward as well.

The reds especially popped when set against the backdrop of the deep blue sea, as was the case as we made our way through coastal towns like Rockland and Camden.

We saw red antique stores, and red vines climbing up brick buildings, turning redder and redder as if challenging the brick: “You think you’re red? We’ll show you red.”

We saw barns fighting, amid the beating Maine takes from the weather, to hang on to their red, picnic tables with a new coat of red, lobsters soon to depart their deep red shells.

I’m not sure whether Maine is a red state or blue state when it comes to politics. I’m sure I could look it up.

But I’m too busy … enjoying the red.

(To see a synopsis of Ace’s travels so far, click here.)

(To see all of “Travels with Ace,” click here.)