I'll try and find some links later, but I've read a number of comments from people who follow Russian politics closely (most of them actually Russian) saying that the idea of Dugin as a 'Rasputin-like' figure, that you see a lot of in Western discourse, is greatly exaggerated; that Putin and Dugin have never met (or there's no public record of any meetings between them, anyway); and that the idea of a 'mentor/pupil' relationship between them is almost certainly false.
Not that Dugin's philosophy of fascistic Russian nationalism, virulent anti-Westernism and a generally conspiratorial worldview isn't exactly the sort of thing Putin approves of and promotes, but there's no reason to think the relationship goes any deeper than that.
Edit: the guy whose thread I posted above described Dugin as a 'third class starlet' with no direct access to the Kremlin.