Alain Delon could have made these words of Madame de Staël his own: “The more I know men, the more I love dogs. »Like Frederick II of Prussia, the actor wanted to be buried near them, in Douchy. There rest about fifty of them in this cemetery, which has been dedicated to them since 1975. Opposite, the actor had a chapel built and his grave dug.
Faithful, “they do not betray,” he confided to Match in 2018. They are all yours and would die for you. They are the love of my life. A dog is like a person. Unfortunately, maybe I didn’t know how to love people the way I loved dogs…”
“Night dogs” and “day dogs”
It is a certainty. He who loved honor as much as it disgusted him, would he have loved them as much if they had not been subject to him? “I just want them to obey, and they need it,” he said. I ask them to love me as I love them, without dominating them. “And in that regard, he liked to repeat, they never let him down. Furthermore, only those in Douchy have all the rights.
Dogs were a childhood dream. In L’Haÿ-les-Roses, when he was little, Delon already spent his time playing with the neighbors’ games if he didn’t have one. Gala, a Doberman, was the first to share his life. Then there was Lipi, Prince, Macha and so many others… Up to fifteen at the same time. “Night dogs”, who only went out in the evening, and “day dogs”, who only came back at the end of the day.
Of course, some felt him more than others. Like Jado, a Belgian shepherd, a “passion”, he declared in 1989, “the terror of French cinema”. “He lived at my pace and followed my ups and downs. When I had liver and kidney pain, he was also ill. »
In 2005, the funeral of Poeky, his daughter’s dog, Anouchka, brought the family together
Each woman in his life is connected to one of his beloved canines: Brando, given to him by Nathalie and who lived with them in the United States, but also Manu, an eighty-kilo Neapolitan mastiff that he raised with Mireille Darc, and who could not have tolerated their breakup: “When Alain and I broke up, Manu […] cried so much not seeing us together that he developed cancer. He died of despair. »
In 2005, the funeral of Poeky, his daughter Anouchka’s dog, brought the family together. For the first time since his departure three years earlier, his ex-wife, Rosalie, mother of Anouchka and Alain-Fabien, was close to them.
Recently, all the articles discussing his setback with his mate, Hiromi Rollin, described how their Malinois shepherd, Loubo, had his assigned seat in the Twingo that the trio traveled from the Douchy estate to the village with. His placement in a kennel and the “mistreatment” he allegedly suffered from Hiromi Rollin were cited by the actor’s children in the complaint against the latter in July 2023. “I don’t, I couldn’t live without him,” Delon said. If he wasn’t here, I would leave my house and go to a hotel. »
The only intruder in the pack, Poupouss, his three-legged cat
“Real loneliness,” he confided to Paris Match in 2018, “is what I see in my dog’s eyes when I leave him. “The only exception to the rule, the eyes of Poupouss, his three-legged cat. Poupouss, who had long performed as an intruder in this pack of dogs, had been found in a parking lot, injured, and Delon had saved him from euthanasia.
“All men die of sorrow,” he said, quoting Buffon. “I’m only happy in the evening when I go to bed and my cat Poupouss climbs on the sheets and clings to my hip. I put my hand on him, he starts purring, and then I’m fine… I could die! »
