This volleyball-playing dog reminds us why we love sports

Thank you, good dog.

Kiara, the volleyball playing dog, went viral for all the right reasons this weekend.

This is the kind of endlessly hopeful video we need at a time when so much feels helpless.

In the absence of sports, there’s something particularly pure and beautiful about animals playing the games we love to watch, because in a lot of ways they remind us what sports are all about.

We have a tendency to over-complicate everything. It’s human nature. We take something pristine, then add layer upon layer of complexity and ancillary elements, and over time we often forget why we love sports in the first place. It’s not enough just to watch your team. You also need to think about salary caps, bicker over how much people are getting paid, pay attention your fantasy sports teams, argue about legacies — the list goes on. Somewhere lost in all this is the inherent fun and joy that comes from watching someone play a game they love at an extremely high level for our entertainment.

So when we see Kiara, a dog without any baggage or misgivings, just getting out there and setting up the ball for a spike, wagging her tail, and anticipating the next time she gets to touch the ball ... it’s just magic.

At times like this I think we’d all give up everything, all the superfluous worries about the business side of sports, just to watch people play games they love again. We should pay attention to the childlike wonder that a dog can teach us. Sports are a pastime — they literally help us pass time, and appreciate the world. Now, with all the time in the world and no way to use it, we have to squeeze all the joy we can from a dog playing the games we wish we could be playing right now.

Hopefully, when all this is over, we learn how to be a little more like Kiara and not take sports for granted.