Alain Delon died the other day, and that made me realise that I knew practically nothing about him other than his having been an actor. Obviously I’d seen some of his films, but didn’t really know much otherwise. So I thought I’d look him up on Wiki, and, well, YIKES. Man was a piece of work. And of shit. Those pretty-boy looks got him places but they hid something fantastically unpleasant too… anyway, this story came out today:
The late French actor Alain Delon’s wish that his pet dog be put down and buried with him has been rejected by his children after an outcry from animal rights campaigners.
The actor, who died aged 88 on Sunday, had said he wished the animal, a 10-year-old Belgian malinois called Loubo, to be “put to sleep” and laid in his grave in the cemetery of his home in the village of Douchy in the Loiret.
On Tuesday, after activists expressed dismay at the prospect of a healthy animal being put down and offered to find the dog a new home, it was announced Loubo would live.
The Brigitte Bardot Foundation said Delon’s daughter Anouchka had confirmed the family would keep the dog.
“I’ve just had Anouchka Delon on the phone and she has told me that Loubo is part of the family and will be kept. The dog will not be put down,” a foundation spokesperson said. […]
“He’s my end of life dog … I love him like a child,” Delon told Paris Match in 2018. “I’ve had 50 dogs in my life, but I have a special relationship with this one. He misses me when I’m not there.”
He added: “If I die before him, I’ll ask the vet to take us away together. He’ll put him to sleep in my arms. I’d rather do that than know that he’ll let himself die on my grave with so much suffering.”
After that interview, the animal association 30 Million Friends condemned what it called the “convenience” euthanasia of a perfectly healthy dog, saying it hoped Loubo would be adopted.
I’m genuinely flabbergasted by this. Some fucking animal lover, eh? At that age, I’m guessing Loubo doesn’t have a lot of time left to him anyway (Malinois apparently live 10-14 years), but unless he was as terribly unwell as Delon was, I don’t see any need to accelerate his ending like that just to satifsy his owner’s ego. So yeah, fuck Alain Delon. Like I said, I didn’t know much about him before he died, and I think I was better off…
