The only thing that was certain was that the big dog didn’t know how to play nicely. Nobody had ever taught it to fetch a ball and bring it back. Franck had never had a dog and didn’t really know anything about them, never having spent much time with them – apart from two shoots where he had worked with several dogs and paid them handsomely, though in truth it was their handlers he dealt with rather than them. That was when he had discovered that animals respond to authority, and that you can get anything from a trained animal. He had also discovered how much actors dislike working with animals, because, at the end of every take, the compliments would always go to the animal rather than to the actor.

Though he was far from knowing everything about the behaviour of dogs, Franck had at least understood something about this one: it was particularly stubborn, or selfish. It would fetch what you threw for it, but that was all. It would keep the ball for itself and destroy it. The dog didn’t seem to understand that it was a game and there was still fun to be had in throwing the ball again and looking for it again. The dog didn’t seem to want to play; it wanted something else. That was why Franck was convinced it was a wolf dog; it thought every game was ridiculous, for the benefit of the human more than the animal. It fetched a ball as diligently as if it were bringing back game, knowing that once it had brought its master the prey, it wouldn’t be asked to go and fetch it again. On the contrary, it had to make sure it was really dead. This dog wasn’t domesticated and was probably not used to humans; every journey had to be useful and every hunt had one aim: food, not play.