 De Puget had versified the story in French as a criticism of the public authorities in his town and showed it to La Fontaine, who took it up and gave it a wider application.There have been two oil paintings based on La Fontaine’s fable.His illustrator Jean-Baptiste Oudry gave the title to a 1751 depiction of a dog fight in the countryside; in the plate later used in the illustrated edition of the fables, other dogs can be seen racing along the path from the town in the distance.