Can those eyes lie?

This is my dog, Bela

...and then of course there's her sister Bebja, who belongs to Elmar - both already familiar to loyal readers from previous blogs.

Both are sometimes as gentle as a lamb, sometimes as stubborn as a ram and sometimes as stupid as a sheep...

All clever sheep may forgive me for the last part of the previous sentence, because I know that sheep are not actually stupid but, on the contrary, super-smart.

But when our two stupid sheep sisters are out and about in pairs - or preferably with the useless black-nosed bear (a small black male from the neighbourhood), they only do ‘budallalleqe’ - in German, stupid things.

And they have learnt a few things from the black-nosed bear that they really enjoy: chasing cars, chasing mopeds, chasing chickens and chasing other people's cats.

And yes, especially since autumn and winter brought the rain and we spent more time in the house than outside with them, all these hunting objects became more and more of a consolation sweet when the waited too long for someone to finally come out despite the damp and cold and provide entertainment and tasks.

Around Christmas, there were more and more rumours that the two of them weren't just content with scaring chickens and moping up the slaughter waste from the neighbours, but were also known to get their teeth into the odd feathered fowl. And everything that drove and walked along the road at the top of our driveway was bombarded with intimidating barking, because they wanted to show us how well they were looking after us - presumably in the hope of more attention and laudatory praise from us.

The next complaints came from parents whose children were scared to go any further on the way to school, which is 50 metres away from us.

So for now, no more the happy dissolute lifestyle - on both sides! Now it was time for training and supervision...

The patio was fitted with a nice railing and gate so that the two of them couldn't escape when we were busy doing other things. And we now practised diligently with them on kilometre-long walks that cars, mopeds, people on the street, chickens, cats and other dogs should be ignored - because we like that much better!!!

But when the children were at school and the moped riders were already at work, they were often allowed to run free with the black-nosed bear.

Until an angry man parked in front of our driveway one day. His children had called him at work because two dogs - whose description matched with ours - were supposed to have killed two chickens in front of them at around 14:15.

Impossible, I explained with conviction, they were definitely locked up on our patio at that time!

The man was calmed by my reassurance - and so was I - until Elmar told me: ‘No, I let them out around two...’.

I subjected the sisters to a highly embarrassing interrogation:

'Have you been snatching chickens? Come on, be honest!"

Two pairs of eyes looked at me in surprise.

‘Chickens? Weeeeee??? No way!!! You know we loooooove chickens! We would neeeeever hurt them!!!’

That they didn't raise their paws to swear was all, but for a brief moment a sly grin seemed to cross their lips. But their eyes gently and sincerely resisted my inquisitorial gaze.

Nevertheless, I slept badly that night because I had lied to the man - although not knowingly.

‘Let's drive past him quickly and tell him that we can't guarantee that they weren't ours,’ I said to Andrea when we returned from Tirana the next day and turned into our street.

But that wasn't necessary, he was already standing in front of our driveway again. This time almost in tears...

The number of dead chicken corpses had now reached seven, but the worst thing for him was the shock of his children, who wanted to let the chickens out after school, while our girls considered it the starting signal for a feast.

The next day brought a loooong fence and lots of fence posts. A large section of the upper property was closed off, the rather wobbly section of fence to the neighbour was raised with everything we had at our disposal and a wooden gate was erected to the right and left so that, apart from the long daily walks on the leash, the two of them would have enough space for physical exercise but also no more opportunity to stray.

But Bela obiously misunderstood the reason for the the new doors.

Day 1: Oh, a little door, I think they want me to learn how to jump over it. It could be that a bad man is coming and I have to intervene quickly. No problem!