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.

Source

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?!

Rosanna of the Amish

Rosanna of the Amish is a touchingly true story of an Irish Catholic orphan who was adopted into a Pennsylvania Dutch Amish home. When she was about nine years old, one of the older brothers came to visit with her for the first time and would have “kidnapped” her on his return to New York and his Catholic upbringing if given the chance. Fortunately, she was well loved by Momly, her adoptive mama, and the whole Amish community was sympathetic to the soft-spoken cheerful black-haired girl so no opportunity was given in which the brother could entice her on the train with him to haul her back to the lifestyle to which she was born. And so Rosanna was raised Amish, married Amish, bore and raised three Amish sons, one of whom years later wrote this simple biography of his mother and the Amish community.

It seems the purpose in writing this book was to acknowledge a son's wonderful mother, who became a pillar of the Amish community, and to also give a factual informative introduction to what Amish life is really about. Joseph Yoder (1872-1956), the son, stated that many people, all outsiders commonly known as “fancy” people, had attempted to write about the Amish community but distorted the truths and glossed over the key principles of hard working, honest, law-abiding, sober, simple and quiet community-minded people. He didn’t want the reading public getting a sensationalized perspective of the Amish but to have a true portrayal of daily Amish life from birth to death from one who was intimately aware of the traditions and beliefs and how those traditions and beliefs often were misrepresented by a growing number of writers, of course, unfamiliar with Amish life. And so Joseph wrote Amische Lieder, Rosanna’s Boys, Amish Traditions, and Rosanna of the Amish.

To me this book was fascinating! I would love to be an anthropologist in a hard-working Amish community of farmers and live with them for an extended period of time. A drawback to that would be in the Pennsylvania Dutch Amish community that Joseph Yoder grew up in had as many as 6 different religious divisions based on religious beliefs by the mid 1900s, and it would be quite the cipher distinguishing their subtleties by someone from the "outside" interacting with a community that values words and uses them conservatively. I suppose distinguishing between the various groups of Amish would be much like distinguishing between the varying Protestants who share a core of beliefs but burst off of the core in a medley of subtle, and some not-so-subtle, interpretations.

However, I am a bit perplexed by just HOW these groups are different. Yes, I do realize this was an introduction to the Amish community but in this book the divisions among the Amish churches were explained to be based on a linear graph of Old Timers who did things like they had been done for hundreds of years to other Amish circles that were more accepting of modern conveniences. A few examples of how the Amish community gradually splintered away from the Old Timers school of thought were seeing no worldliness in wearing suspenders, worshiping in a church building rather than gathering in a home, "dancing" (seems to be related to how the body moves to music, and what kind of music, rather than "fancy" people's concept of "dancing" with wild or free abandonment). In any case, people who chose to have less rigid interpretation of clothing, entertainment, etc were viewed as more liberal and “worldly” and therefore could be shunned. Changing membership from the Old Timers gathering to another gathering was also reason to be shunned, provided that person had been baptized in the Old Timers' gathering; otherwise there appeared to be more acceptance of people originally accepting the more liberal gatherings.

One thing about this book, it strikes me anew as I write about it, is that the portrayal of the Amish church gatherings was not grounded on Biblical texts but seemed to be focused on non-Biblical differences. To me, this reflects the internal turmoil of dissention between the Amish groups that the author was aware of as a Plain person but failed to communicate to "fancy" people who want to understand the Biblical foundations of the group(s).

Doing anthropological research in an Amish community though would be very exciting to me as I enjoy working with my hands, I approve the hard-working simple lifestyle, and I have so many questions. I think if I were to be an anthropologist among the Amish, the two largest points of interest I would most want satisfied would be concerning religion and concerning health beliefs/practices. My questions would springboard from:

1. RELIGION - What are the core religious beliefs of the Amish community? What has caused the churches to divide? What kind of communication exists or doesn’t exist between churches?
2. HEALTH - What kind of health problems are typical of Amish communities? What kind of disease prevention is used? Are autoimmune diseases prevalent in the community – and if so, what kind? Does celiac disease exist in the community (big question as the Amish eat a lot of flour products)? How are doctors viewed – what kind of doctors? What kind of medical treatments are allowed and disallowed? What are the Amish beliefs about donating blood, organs, having operations?

I realize that the Plain people wouldn’t be comfortable talking freely with a “fancy” person like myself, but I think there are many values cherished by the Amish that the “fancy” people of the world could embrace to better their enjoyment of life and be better stewards of the world. Yep, I would love being an anthropologist in such a community with strong religious and family values!