Kiara the volleyball dog may be a retriever mix, but she’s also a heck of a setter.

The talented pooch has become a viral sensation by starring in videos that show off her remarkable volleyball skills. Kiara is not just keeping balls in play for fun, though — she is helping her human with his training while the professional beach volleyball tour remains on hiatus amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Kiara’s playing partner in the video above is Mathias Berntsen, a competitor on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. Berntsen, 24, represents Norway and has been playing mostly with countryman Hendrik Mol, but if the latter is ever unavailable, it’s apparent that a more-than-capable replacement is waiting in the wings.

Berntsen and Mol are members of Norway’s “Beachvolley Vikings,” a group led by the world’s No. 1 team of Anders Mol (Hendrik’s brother) and Christian Sorum. Berntsen and his partner are Norway’s second-ranked duo, but they all might soon have to acknowledge that the foremost beach volleyball Viking is a canine conquering with cuteness.

According to a social media account set up in her honor, Kiara is named after a central character from “The Lion King II.” She is described as a mix between a flat-coated retriever and a black Labrador, and she clearly has a nose for the ball.

Thus far, we haven’t seen Kiara attempt a spike, but with the Tokyo Olympics pushed back to 2021, that might just be all the time she needs to complete her skill set. If nothing else, Hollywood may have reason to pick up where the final installment of the “Air Bud” series — in which the lovable golden retriever unveils amazing volleyball abilities in 2003′s “Air Bud: Spikes Back” — left off.

The rest of us can simply express gratitude to Berntsen and, especially, Kiara for bringing us the kind of joyful content that we all could use more of these days.

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