ohmidog!

Revised, reconfigured and ready to get you all the way through 2013, the “Travels with Ace” calendar is back on sale for a limited time.

A heavy-duty, 18-month wall calendar, it’s illustrated with photos from our year-long, 27,000-mile trip across America — from the coast of Maine, where Ace was the first dog in America to see the sunrise one day in October, to the shores of Monterey, where Ace hopped up for a closer look at a bust of John Steinbeck — the author who inspired our journey.

You can buy it and get more information here, or by clicking on that ad to the left.

Fifty percent of profits from the sale of the calendar go to Rolling Dog Farm, a sanctuary for deaf, blind and disabled animals in New Hampshire (and also one of the stops on our trip).

We’ve added photos of one stop that we didn’t include the first time around — the Coon Dog Cemetery in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

The rest of the calendar is packed with images from some of our other stops:

@Salvation Mountain in California, where Leonard Knight has fashioned and painted a mountain in honor of God.

@Niagara Falls, where Ace — ohmigod! — almost disappeared.

@The Lodge, a gentleman’s club in Dallas, where we met one of Michael Vick’s former dogs, and where Ace briefly took the stage.

@Various points south, like Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, where we kept running into kudzu dogs.

@The mountains of North Carolina, where we went in search of the elusive — and sometimes not so elusive — white squirrel.

@Rolling Dog Farm, where we reconnected with some old friends.

@John Steinbeck’s former home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., where we began retracing the route the author took in “Travels with Charley.”

@A marina in Baltimore, where we lived on a sailboat for a week, which Ace mostly liked.

Initial sales of the calendar raised $400 for Rolling Dog Farm.

More than 400 people gathered in Alabama last week to pay their last respects to Bo, a black and tan coonhound whose family traveled 300 miles to bury him at the Key Underwood Memorial Coon Dog Cemetery.

Bo, the 2008 Purina Outstanding Show Dog of the Year, was eulogized for his ability to hunt raccoons, his unfailing nose and his ability to speedily navigate all terrains. But it was probably as a friend that he made his biggest impact.

“He was the goodest dog ever,” Ericka Seets, 6, explained at the service. “I loved BoBo.”

Bo, whose full name was Shawnee Hills Beaujolais, lived in southern Illinois. But he was buried Thursday at the world’s only cemetery dedicated to hounds who hunt raccoons.

It was Ericka who insisted he be brought to Alabama for burial, according to  the Times Daily in Florence, Alabama.

As her grandfather, Michael Seets, explained it, he brought Bo to his home in Illinois in 2007 to help train him for dog shows and hunting for his owner, who lived in Georgia.

While Bo was an attentive student, he also liked to spend time with Ericka, laying in bed, eating doughnuts and watching cartoons on television.

Because of Ericka, Seets made an exception to his rule of never letting dogs into the house. And when it came time to return the dog to his owner, Ericka, 3-years old at the time, said no.

“I said we’ve got to take BoBo home,” Michael Seets said. “She said, `no, BoBo’s mine.’ I thought, `Now ain’t this something.”‘

Seets said that when he explained to the owner about how the hunting dog had become a house pet, and the connection between Bo and Ericka, the owner gave them the dog.

Two years ago, the Seets learned about the Key Underwood Memorial Coon Dog Cemetery from a friend in Pennsylvania who had a dog buried there. They watched a video of the service, and Ericka decided then that Bo would be buried there when his time came.

“Bo was a good dog. This is the place you bury a good dog,” said Michael Seets, who lives in Stonefort, Ill.

“We’ve had other good dogs, and when they died, we buried them behind the barn or beside a tree. But Bo was special because Little Red (Ericka) loved him so much.”

(Photo: WAAY-TV;  video: WAFF-TV)

 
Ace stepped lightly between the tombstones, paused to sniff a clump of artificial flowers, then moved on – past Flop, Train, Daisy, Black Ranger and Bear. He paused at the final resting places of Patches and Preacher and Bean Blossom Bomma, then sauntered by Smoky, Squeek and Easy Going Sam, whose rusting collar is looped over the cross marking his grave.

We were alone at the Coon Dog Cemetery in Cherokee, Alabama – except for the 215 dogs buried beneath us — on a hot and drizzly Friday, silent except for the chirps of birds and the whining hum of mosquitos sizing up my ears.

I’d long wanted to visit the Coon Dog Cemetery. We’ve featured it on this website before. But those were long distance, second hand dispatches. Being there, especially when no one else is, is another story.

Between the bursts of color provided by the fake flowers on almost every grave; the eclectic mix of memorials, ranging from engraved stone, to etched metal to carved wooden crosses, and the homey epitaphs and monikers, the cemetery is at once haunting and inspiring – a Southern icon, and a reminder of the powerful, difficult to relinquish, connection between dog and owner.

Especially when that dog and owner were hunting buddies.

Located in a grassy meadow in the wilderness of Freedom Hills, the cemetery permits only coon dogs – 215 of which are buried there, according to Susann Hamlin, executive director of the Colbert County Tourism & Convention Bureau, which now maintains the property.

The cemetery got its start when Key Underwood chose the spot – not far from where coon hunters gathered to share stories – to bury his faithful coon dog Troop. On a dreary Labor Day in 1937, Troop was wrapped in a cotton sack and buried three feet down. Underwood marked the grave with a rock from an old chimney. He used a hammer and screwdriver to chisel Troop’s name and date.

After that, other hunters started doing the same – first those from Alabama and Mississippi, later from all around the country.

 
We found it after driving 15 miles down a winding road through the gently rolling hills of northwest Alabama, and for an hour had it all to ourselves. Then another car pulled up, driven by Hamlin, who was escorting a photographer working on a project about Alabama for the National Archives.

Hamlin said about three dogs a year are buried at the cemetery nowadays – a reflection of the declining popularity of the sport, in which the dogs track raccoons and chase them up trees before the hunters … well, you know the rest.

How much pride those hunters took in their dogs still lingers though, in tall tales, folklore and, most of all, at the cemetery, where heartfelt tributes are hammered, carved and burned into grave markers:

“He wasn’t the best, but he was the best I ever had.”

“He was good as the best and better than the rest.”

“He was a joy to hunt with.”

Every year on Labor Day, a festival is held at the cemetery, hosted by the Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association. The cemetery is spruced up and decorated, and the event features bluegrass music, food and a liar’s contest.

For more information, visit Coondogcemetery.com and Colbertcountytourism.org. Caps and T-shirts can be purchased online, and proceeds help support the cemetery.

Better yet, check it out in person. Admission is free, but the mosquitos do take up donations. I added about a dozen more bites to my ongoing collection – a small price to pay for such a big, colorful and moving sampling of southern culture.

To read all of Dog’s Country, click here.