How hard can it be to fall in love with a football player when you're afraid of footballs...?
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Helping out her best friend by playing the lead in that music video project for university had seemed like an easy enough feat for art student Lorelai...
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A day later, the dogs were running around on the grass of a small meadow, jumping and chasing each other. It was obvious that they were having fun. Poker, as the smallest of the group, was rebuked by the older dogs here and there, but Lorelai had told Neymar it was normal pack behaviour: the puppy was being educated right now, a natural part of the process of growing up and finding your place in the pack.
At first, Neymar had been afraid that Poker would run off somewhere — the dogs were running around freely, leashes left behind with the respective masters and mistress. But every time the puppy would start roaming the area, one of Lorelai's dogs would scud after him and chase him back to the others. It was Khan with his long strides more often than not; the tall dog with the dark grey fur and tranquil nature was undeniably the temporary leader of the gang.
Even Nina, undoubtedly used to being the alpha queen under Marc's love and care, had subordinated herself under Khan's command. Since Neymar didn't understand dog psychology in the slightest, he could only guess as to why — was it because Khan was taller and stronger, or was it maybe because he seemed so balanced, calm and collected? It didn't matter; all that he could tell was that the tallest and oldest of the four dogs had »boss« basically written on his big snout.
After a while, Neymar had started to relax as he watched the dogs play. They were perfectly content with entertaining each other — no need for him to throw a ball or a stick to fetch (which, arguably, he himself would still like to do today). He could understand Lorelai for having two dogs; if it weren't such a drag having just one, he would get a companion for Poker too. But that rascal was already quite enough to handle — for now at least.
Maybe they all could meet up like this more often; it seemed to do the dogs all the best, at least. If only the humans were on talking basis.
Okay, so most of them were.
»Bus and tram are out for me,« Lorelai said. »The two rascals are just too tall.« She and Marc were in the middle of talking about public transportation in Barcelona and the difficulties she had with the two monsters. She was telling him the story about the old woman fainting in the tram — him and Dani actually, who, as was talked about yesterday at the training ground, had come along, even though he didn't even have a dog. Neymar already knew this story, but he smiled along anyways as she told it.
They had taken a seat on the ground, the four of them sitting on a huge blanket that Lorelai had brought along. Each of them had a bottle of water in hands and several empty sandwich wrappings and sweets were lying across the blanket — oh so healthy nutrition that he, Dani and Marc had organised from a vendor at one of the entrances of the park earlier; »Parc Collsera«, a nature park just on the outskirts of Barcelona, to be exact. For the dogs, Lorelai had gotten a huge bowl of some sort out of that huge bright yellow shoulder bag she always seemed to carry around with her. The bowl was foldable and hardly took away space in that bag of hers, he could see a thick sketch book and a small box (most likely containing pencils and stuff) in there as well. Never going without something to paint, apparently. In any case, that bowl offered plenty of space for water for the four dogs to drink from. Neymar hadn't even known a thing like foldable bowls existed.
