FINDING GOBI: A LITTLE DOG with a VERY BIG HEART by Dion Leonard

 


Published by Thomas Nelson in 2017.
Read by Simon Bubb.
Duration: 6 hours, 36 minutes.
Unabridged.

Dion Leonard is an ultramarathon runner. Ultramarathons are technically marathons that are longer than a traditional 26.2 mile marathon, but Dion Leonard likes to run extended multi-day ultramarathons.

He was running a multi-day race in the Gobi Desert in China when he met a scruffy little dog as he was lining up to start day two of the race. To be accurate, the little dog was attracted to him - it wouldn't leave him alone!

Gobi with Dion Leonard

When the race started, Leonard assumed that the dog would follow for a while and then return home, wherever that was. But, the dog followed him every step of the way - 23 miles. That night, the dog stayed with Leonard in his tent and went with him again on the 3rd stage of the race. As they headed into the desert, Leonard worried that the dog could be hurt by the higher temperature more brutal landscape. So, he arranged for the dog to be carried on to the end of the next stage and eventually to the end of the race.

Turns out that he was right, the next stage was dangerous and the desert nearly killed Leonard and many other runners. 

By this time, Leonard had named the dog (Gobi) and had decided to bring the dog back to his home in the UK. 

And that's where things got complicated...

This is a pretty good story, but a little slow-paced. Really, the story has three focuses: 

a) The life of Dion Leonard and how he ended up running that race in the desert.

b) Ultramarathoning, especially the race where Leonard met Gobi.

c) The extraordinarily complicated story of how Gobi left China. 

Sometimes, the book seems like it is trying to stretch things out to actually fill a book. When you get down to it, it is the story of a guy who finds a dog when he's out on a run and brings it home so the padding is justified. Personally, I found the story of the race and how Leonard first met Gobi the best part of the book.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: FINDING GOBI: A LITTLE DOG with a VERY BIG HEART by Dion Leonard.

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