Finding Gobi: The Bond between a Man and a Dog

Dion Leonard, age 42 and seasoned ultra-marathon runner, is adopted by a stray dog in his 155-mile race through the Gobi Desert. The multi-day race starts at 8am on the first four days, a run each day of about a marathon distance, and the final and fifth day of the race, the run is a 50-mile endurance race to the finish. On ultra-marathon races, the runner must carry his own gear and food for the entire distance. Only water and a tent is provided, the most basic of elements to facilitate in the run. So to pare down the excess ounces of weight, Dion was carrying only 2,000 calories of food per day—mostly in power hydrating gels—even though he would be burning about 5,000 calories a day.

At the end of day 1, the leg of the race through high elevation in the Tian Shen Mountains, Dion was placing third in the race. He chugged into camp and moved to his tent space, passing a small dog that was charming people for food. Getting people to give it food so early in the race was no mean feat, and Dion’s thoughts, “Clever dog. There’s no way I’d feed it.”

Day 2 of the race the cute dog was out at the starting line, fascinated with the line up of runners. Dion took his place near the front to get in position for a tight squeeze he knew would be coming up in the trail early on. The dog fastened its attention on Dion’s yellow gaiters and started playing with the shoe strings, and once Dion burst into motion, the flashing yellow gaiters became even more fascinating to the little dog, and thus became the race for Day 2 … Dion running and being paced by a small dog with legs no longer than Dion’s hands. At the end of Day 2 Dion sacrificed a morsel of calorie-giving food to the dog, which happily curled up beside Dion and claimed its spot for the night.

Day 3 kicked off with the dog adamantly attached to Dion’s side and they sped off through an increasingly hot desert. Running for Dion is not pleasure like it is for his wife, a running trainer. In fact, he hates running; he just likes competing. Frustrations bother him, his scarred childhood affects his performance, and running without his wife Lucja to emotionally support him is hell. But the dog running beside him soothes him and his mind reaches out … and he starts to care. The dog is determined but when culverts appear, the short-legged dog struggles to keep up, and when a knee-deep river appears and the dog whines and barks behind him, Dion finally does something he’s never done before, the competition takes second place and he turns around … giving the dog priority. Losing race-breaking minutes, he wades back, scoops up the dog, and crosses the river. From then on he carries the dog over other culverts, and stops every hour or two to give the dog water out of his own bottle and in his own hand.

At the end of the race, a race that Dion placed second in and could have been first if he had sacrificed the life of another runner who collapsed and would have died without Dion’s attention and all of his water, Dion triumphed over some of the evil demons that had haunted him from his childhood. He was content placing second, saying second felt good because he was a trail player who recognized that priorities affect life and one’s ultimate satisfaction in it.

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The cover of the book says “A man, a dog, and the love that changed both their lives forever” is not an understatement. About two-thirds of the book is about the bonding relationship of Dion and the dog he named Gobi as he went through the process of immunizations and immigration to the UK. He sacrificed another ultra-marathon he was scheduled to run in Chile in order to eliminate the stress to Gobi a four-month quarantine time period in the UK would create. Priorities were priorities, and by this time the story of Gobi and her bonding with an ultra-marathon runner had become one of the international heart-throb stories of 2016.

From Jonathan Brown’s write-up in the Daily Mirror which brought the story of Gobi and Dion to the press (July 2016), Dion interviewed with BBC Radio Live, BBC UK and World Services, CNN, Washington Post, ESPN, ABC, Fox News, USA Today, Huffington Post, Reuters, the New York Times, Inside Edition, Times, Canadian Post, Channel 7 Australia, Good Morning Britain, Eric Zane Show podcast, and more. The story went even more viral with crowd funding with contributions from all over the world—Australia, India, Venezuela, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, Ghana, Cambodia, and even North Korea. The book Finding Gobi: The Amazing True Story (2017) ends with Gobi at home in the UK with Dion, Lucja, and Lara the cat. But does the story end or … will Dion take Gobi out on subsequent ultra-marathons as the dog is clearly a runner?!