The Gobi Desert ultramarathon is one of the most brutal races on earth. One hundred and fifty-five miles across relentless terrain, temperatures that swing from scorching heat to freezing cold, and runners who push their bodies to the absolute limit of human endurance. British runner Dion Leonard was there in 2016, prepared for the physical challenge. What he wasn’t prepared for was the tiny stray dog who appeared beside him on the first day and refused to leave.
Her name—given later—was Gobi. Small, scruffy, with eyes that seemed to understand something about persistence that matched the runners around her. She fell into stride beside Dion and stayed there. Mile after mile, through sand and heat and exhaustion, this little dog kept pace. Seventy miles she ran alongside him, her small legs working twice as hard to match his stride, her determination as fierce as any competitor in the race.
Dion fell in love. Not just with her loyalty, but with the way she seemed to choose him out of everyone there. The way she looked up at him during breaks, the way she curled up beside him at night, the way she made the brutal desert feel less lonely. By the time the race ended, he’d made a decision: Gobi was coming home with him to Edinburgh.
But shortly after the race, Gobi went missing.
Dion searched everywhere. Asked locals, retraced routes, scoured the areas where they’d camped. Nothing. The little dog who’d run seventy miles beside him had vanished into a city of millions, and he had no idea how to find her. He could have given up. Could have told himself it was impossible, that she was just a stray dog in a foreign country, that he’d tried his best.
Instead, he asked the other twenty volunteers from the race to spread out and search together.
For one week, they combed the city. Showed photos. Asked questions. Followed leads that went nowhere. And then, finally—someone spotted her. She was safe. Alive. Waiting, maybe, for the runner who’d become her person during those seventy desert miles.
Gobi now lives with Dion in Edinburgh. Warm, cared for, loved in the way that stray animals dream about when they’re alone and hungry and hoping someone will notice them. She didn’t just find a home. She found someone who refused to give up on her, who mobilized an entire team of volunteers to search for a tiny dog most people would have considered replaceable.
But Gobi wasn’t replaceable. Not to Dion. Not to the volunteers who spent a week searching. Because they understood something essential: that loyalty deserves loyalty in return. That when a small creature chooses to run seventy miles beside you, trusting you with everything she has, you don’t walk away when things get hard. You search. You keep looking. You refuse to stop until she’s safe.
The ultramarathon tested Dion’s physical limits. But losing Gobi tested something deeper—his commitment to the promise he’d made to a stray dog who’d given him her trust. And he passed that test. Not by himself, but with the help of twenty people who believed that one small life mattered enough to keep searching for.
Gobi’s story isn’t just about a dog who ran an impossible distance. It’s about the runner who saw her worth, who recognized that her loyalty demanded something equal in return. It’s about volunteers who could have gone home but chose to stay and help search for a dog they barely knew, because they understood that this mattered. That she mattered.
In the Gobi Desert, a tiny stray dog decided to run beside a stranger. And that stranger decided she was worth bringing home, worth searching for, worth never giving up on. They absolutely deserve our respect—Dion for refusing to abandon her, the volunteers for helping him search, and Gobi for showing us what loyalty looks like when it runs on four small legs through seventy miles of desert heat.
She’s home now. Safe in Edinburgh, loved by the runner who became her person, proof that sometimes the most important race isn’t the one you train for—it’s the one you run to keep a promise to a small creature who trusted you with everything.
Image Caption: A stray dog ran 70 miles beside a runner in the Gobi Desert—when she went missing, 20 volunteers searched until she was found. 🐾❤️