If you are someone who swoons over dogs, especially rescue dogs, Finding Gobi is the book for you. This is a heart-warming story of ultra-marathoner Dion Leonard and how he found this small dog while he was racing a 155 mile ultra across the Gobi Desert. Dion didn’t like the dog – at all. But the dog liked him and followed him across almost 80 miles of the desert. During this time, Dion warmed up to Gobi and eventually decided to adopt him.
The real heart of the story, though, is the love that was put into getting Gobi back to Scotland. Dion was faced with many challenges including money, time away from work, waiting for Gobi’s quarantine to end and the other politics that come from moving a dog from China to the UK, all of which were overcome through the compassion and help of strangers from around the world. Dion’s greatest hurdle, though, was finding Gobi after he got away from his guardians in China. Even though I knew that Dion and this fiesty pup did find each other again, I never lost interest in the story due to the many unexpected events that happened during the search. In fact, I found this part of the book fascinating as Dion navigated many political and social channels to find and bring home his dog.
As a hu-mom of a rescue pup and a runner, I loved this book. Everything about Dion, from his strength of character at the ultramarathon to his commitment to finding a stray dog that he didn’t even like at first, exemplifies that there are good people in the world, people that look out for others, people that care. During our current situation, our world needs more stories of hope like this.
