Fluffier Than a Bluetick Hound

There's a very special cemetery five miles off Highway 247 in Northwest Alabama. It's beautiful, well kept and isolated. They like to say you have to be hunting for this place to find it. You'd expect that, for this isn't your ordinary graveyard. It's Coon Dog Cemetery, the final resting place for dogs who spent their lives tracking raccoons all over the Deep South.

It all started in September of 1937 when Troop, Key Underwood's best coon dog, died and Mr. Underwood gave him a proper burial on this quiet piece of land. One by one, other beloved hunting dogs were laid to rest beside Troop as word of this hallowed ground spread. By the way, there's a standard for admission to the Coon Dog Cemetery--if your dog couldn't tree a coon, he need not apply. I'll leave you with an anecdote from The Montgomery Advertiser. In it Mr. Underwood is telling the story of a woman from California who wrote him wanting to know why only coon dogs were buried in his cemetery.

"Ma'am," Mr. Underwood responded, "you must not know much about coon hunters and their dogs, if you think we'd contaminate this burial place with poodles!"