Dingo and Flamant

Dingo and Flamant are joined by a restrained, largely wordless companionship that grows from shared time in the garden into a recognition of common hunting instincts. Flamant does not court the dog with demonstrations of affection; instead, he accepts Dingo’s quiet presence beside him at work. Later, when Dingo returns from a long absence bearing evidence of a hare hunt, Flamant sees him not merely as a pet but as a fellow hunter. Their relationship reaches its clearest expression after Dingo dies: Flamant helps bury him with tenderness and refuses the narrator’s money, explaining that the dog’s remembered companionship mattered more than any payment.

Companionship in the Garden

Dingo’s relationship with Flamant takes shape at the house in Veneux-Nadon, where the garden opens directly onto the Forêt de Fontainebleau. The change of setting had restored Dingo’s energy after city life had left him withdrawn and listless. He came to live mostly in the forest, but he also chose to spend time near Flamant when the gardener worked. Their connection thus belongs neither simply to domestic life nor to the forest: Dingo can range beyond the garden, yet returns to share its ordinary labor with Flamant.

The companionship is quiet by design. Flamant is described as a man who respects silence, and Dingo adjusts himself to that reserve. He does not bark or jump around the gardener, nor does he demand attention; he settles nearby. When Flamant pushes a wheelbarrow full of weeds to the end of the garden, Dingo follows calmly, waits while it is emptied, and accompanies him back. The small routine shows Dingo choosing Flamant’s company without interrupting his work. Their closeness is made legible through repeated proximity and attention, not through a display of obedience or exuberant affection.

One brief moment makes that attentiveness physical. Flamant lightly cuts a finger with a pruning hook, and Dingo comes to lick the blood. The gesture is not presented as a grand act of care, but it marks a reciprocal intimacy: Dingo has been keeping Flamant company, and when Flamant is hurt, however slightly, the dog responds directly. Later, Flamant remembers that Dingo would lie in the path facing him and watch him, and that he sometimes came to lick his hand. The remembered details are modest, but they explain why Flamant’s attachment survives even though he says he did not know Dingo very well.

Recognition Between Hunters

Dingo and Flamant are connected not only by quiet companionship but by their relation to hunting. Their recognition of this likeness becomes especially clear after Dingo has been away for three days. He returns the previous evening, and the following morning lies in front of Flamant while the gardener digs. Flamant, who rarely speaks, addresses him about having hunted and knowing where the hares can be found. Dingo’s ears rise and his tail moves as Flamant repeats the thought, turning the exchange into an unusually sustained conversation between them.

Flamant then notices a grayish clump of fur, stuck with saliva and blood at the angle of Dingo’s jaw. He identifies it as hare fur. The small trace makes Dingo’s unseen absence concrete: his return carries evidence of what he has been doing in the forest. Flamant responds by taking Dingo’s head in both hands and drawing close to him. The contact follows recognition, rather than an attempt to restrain or domesticate the dog. He has read the sign of the hunt and is moved by what it confirms about Dingo.

The narrator interprets their affinity through a contrast between their methods. Flamant watches for animals; Dingo drives them out. Neither hunts as a Sunday pastime, equipped for the conventional outing described in the narrative. They hunt when they choose and for themselves. This parallel does not make their roles identical: Flamant’s is the human practice of a watcher and trapper, while Dingo’s is the animal pursuit of prey. But it gives their relationship a basis independent of ownership. The dog and the gardener understand one another, in part, through a shared instinct that the ordinary distinctions between human leisure and animal predation do not fully capture.

The Wider World of Dingo’s Instinct

The bond with Flamant unfolds against the persistent tension between Dingo’s wild appetites and the human spaces around him. Earlier in Ponteilles, the dog watched the daily movement of animals from behind the narrator’s gate. The passing sheep, especially, stirred him into agitated leaps, while the village’s dogs gathered in noisy, sometimes violent encounters. These scenes establish a Dingo drawn to animals not simply as familiar presences but as potential objects of pursuit. In the forest, that impulse has room to become a way of life rather than an eruption into the village’s settled routines.

The garden companionship does not erase this independence. Dingo disappears for days, spends much of his life in the forest, and returns without offering an explanation. His attachment to Flamant is therefore not shown as constant attendance or submission. Flamant does not require Dingo to stay beside him, and Dingo does not abandon his freedom in order to maintain the bond. Their rapport accommodates both the dog’s absences and his voluntary returns. The scene of the hare fur is significant because it brings the two sides together: Dingo comes back from hunting, and Flamant welcomes the evidence of that life rather than demanding that the dog become something else.

This understanding helps frame the tenderness of their final encounter. Dingo’s predatory nature remains part of the story’s account of him, but it does not cancel his capacity to form attachments. Flamant’s own connection to hunting lets him recognize the dog without reducing him to either a domestic companion or a danger. Their affinity rests on a shared activity, yet the companionship also exceeds that activity: it includes the patient presence in the garden and the remembered touch of Dingo licking Flamant’s hand.

Burial and the Meaning of the Bond

The day after Dingo’s death, the narrator finds Flamant returning from the forest, where he has been resetting his snares. They are empty, and his shoes and trousers are wet with dew. When told that Dingo has died, Flamant startles and lets the snares fall. The narrator asks him to help with the burial. Flamant answers without words, taking a pickaxe and shovel and following him to the chosen place at the foot of an oak.

After digging the grave, they fetch Dingo. Flamant lays the body on a wheelbarrow with careful, reverent movements, brings him slowly to the grave, and buries him as he would someone dearly loved. He covers the earth with pieces of turf lifted from the lawn. The care in these actions gives practical form to an affection that had seldom been spoken aloud. The quiet labor also recalls the earlier garden scenes: the wheelbarrow that once carried weeds now carries Dingo, and Flamant’s habitual work becomes an act of mourning.

The narrator offers Flamant gold coins for his help, but Flamant returns them. He says that although he did not know Dingo very well, the dog was beautiful and had kept him company when he worked at the house. He remembers Dingo lying in the path to watch him and sometimes licking his hand; his voice trembles, and the narrator observes that he has never said so much. Flamant then shoulders his tools and walks away in silence. The refusal of payment distinguishes the burial from a service rendered for hire: for Flamant, Dingo’s companionship has made the act personal, and money cannot measure it.

The relationship offers a concentrated counterpoint to the conflict between Dingo’s freedom and the demands of human life. Flamant neither tries to tame the dog into constant attendance nor treats his death as an occasion for reward. He recognizes Dingo’s hunting nature, shares the garden with him, and finally honors him through unpurchased care. Their connection is shown less through declarations than through chosen proximity, a returned visit, a trace left by the hunt, and the quiet work of burial.