Finding Gobi

by Dion Leonard

  Not that it was perfect. The TV, for example, was terrible.

  I expected there to be at least a basic range of channels. Maybe a little BBC or some Fox News from time to time. No chance. All I could get were two channels: a Chinese news service that looped an hour-long summary of the previous day’s events and a movie channel with the occasional Hollywood offering presented with Chinese subtitles. I got my hopes up when I discovered this second one, but it turned out that most of your favourite B-list movie stars have an awfully long catalogue of films that are so bad they’ve never made it to our Western screens. I watched some truly terrible movies in those early days. I eventually got bored and gave up trying. I was fed up with nothing to do.

  The Internet was a problem too. It took me a week to work out how to get around the extensive filters the Chinese authorities put on the web, but my hack made streaming any video content almost impossible.

  Gobi and I tried to spend more time outside. The mile-long footpath along the canal was always a good place to walk, especially when the construction workers were on their breaks. They ignored us as they gathered around the food vendors on the street, who had a great trade going among them. Gobi and I soon learned that the best stalls of all were the ones serving jianbing—what I called a Beijing burrito. Think of a thin crepe with an egg cooked inside it and a load of crushed, crispy fried wonton, delicious spices, and chilli. Gobi and I couldn’t get enough of those.

  We had got thrown out of almost all of the coffee shops we tried, but, thankfully, we found a Starbucks that was happy to break the rules and let us sit outside. Best of all was a little independent café where the staff not only allowed us inside but even ignored me when I put Gobi on the seat and fed her a bit of my pastry.

  For a city that doesn’t allow dogs in taxis or buses, and has only recently passed a law allowing guide dogs to travel on subways, this was a major success. We made sure we supported them well throughout our stay.

  As fun as it was to learn about this new life together, one thing continually worried me—Gobi’s damaged hip. She did her best to hide it and had learned how to skip along without putting too much weight on it. But if I ever picked her up the wrong way or tried to hold her on my left side instead of my right, she’d let out a little cry of pain.

  In addition, the injury on her head hadn’t healed as well as Kiki or I had hoped.

  So after a week in the flat, I broke the bad news to Gobi.

  “No café for you and me today, little one. We’re going to see the vet.”

  22

  I couldn’t stand the noise. I stood in the corridor and tried to block out the sound of Gobi gripped by pain and fear, but it was no use. Those squeals and cries were the most horrible noise I’d ever heard in my whole life.

  I’d read somewhere that to prevent dogs from associating deep pain and fear with their owners, you shouldn’t be in the same room with them when they’re given an injection. Even without that advice, I don’t think I would have been able to be by her side.

  When the anaesthetic kicked in and she finally grew quiet, one of the nurses came and found me.

  “She’s fine. Do you want to come in?”

  Thanks to Kiki, Gobi was about to be operated on in one of the top veterinary hospitals in the city. And thanks to the Chinese media, all of the nurses and doctors had already heard of Gobi. That (plus a good word from Kiki) meant Gobi had the most experienced surgical team and both Kiki and I were allowed to wash up, put on the blue scrubs, and join the team in the operating theatre.

  After numerous scans and extensive consultations, the staff unanimously confirmed what I’d been told in Urumqi—that the cause of Gobi’s pain and strange hopping was an injury to her right hip. Whether she had been hit by a car or a human, it was impossible to say, but sometime during her runabout in Urumqi, she’d picked up the injury, which had forced her hip out of the pelvis.

  The staff recommended Gobi have a femoral head ostectomy: a form of hip surgery where the top of the femur is removed but not replaced with anything, leaving the body to heal itself and the joint to reform with scar tissue.

  I’d been reassured a dozen times that this was a standard procedure that could yield excellent results. I was confident in the team and felt we were in safe hands. But as I stood and watched them about to begin the hour-long operation, I was still a nervous wreck.

  Again, it was the noises that got me, though this time Gobi was too heavily drugged to make a sound. She was lying with her tongue hanging out like an old sock, breathing steadily into the mask placed over her mouth, while the nurses shaved away all the fur from her right hip. What bothered me this time was the sound of the machines that were monitoring her heart rate and oxygen levels. Ever since Garry’s death, I have always hated hearing the sound of those machines on TV. They remind me of the night I stood in my sister’s room and listened to the medics try to save him, and whenever I hear the steady beeps, I ask myself the same, simple question: If I’d got out of bed sooner, would I have been able to save him?

  A conversation broke out among the doctors, their voices slightly raised. Kiki must have sensed my concern because she tapped me on the shoulder and spoke softly. She told me they were trying to decide how much of the drug to give her to prevent a heart attack without going too far and inducing one.

  “I hope they know what they’re doing,” I muttered. I felt physically sick inside.

  Eventually, when the room quietened down and they started to operate, I told Kiki I had to go. “Come and get me as soon as it’s all done,” I said. “I can’t be in here.”

  The hour felt more like a month, but when it was finally over, the head surgeon came to reassure me that the surgery had gone well and Gobi would soon be coming around. I sat beside her in the recovery room and watched her gradually wake up.

  There was a moment when she looked at me, and everything was just as it was every morning, her big eyes locked on mine. But a second later the pain must have kicked in, for her high-pitched whimpering started up again. Looking at her, listening to her, I understood clearly that she was in a world of pain. Nothing I could do seemed to help.

  Within less than a day, Gobi’s true spirit was shining through again. She was in pain from the operation, and I knew her hip would take weeks to fully repair itself, but by the time I got her back to the flat, she was back to her old tail-wagging, face-licking self.

  I, on the other hand, was feeling unsettled. I couldn’t be sure whether it was seeing Gobi in pain that had bothered me or the memories of Garry’s death, but I knew for certain that in the days and weeks that followed, I was still worried about Gobi’s safety.

  Right from the start of our time in Beijing, I’d felt a little nervous about the number of people who recognized Gobi. But as we spent more and more time in the flat during her recovery, I grew a little paranoid. If I was down in the lobby waiting for a lift and someone else joined me—especially if the person wasn’t Chinese—I’d make a point of getting out at either the tenth or the twelfth floor and using the stairs to reach the eleventh, looking over my shoulder as I went. I knew it was silly, and I knew that if someone did want to snatch Gobi, it would take a lot more than my amateur spy impression to keep us safe. But the instinct to be suspicious about strangers was too strong to resist.

  It didn’t help that the rest of the flats on my floor were also short-term rentals. That meant there was a constant turnover of people. Remembering the visit from the guys in suits in Urumqi, I eyed all residents carefully.

  “It’s okay to go out and live a normal life,” said Kiki after I shared my fears one day.

  A normal life? I wasn’t even sure I knew what that meant anymore. Four months earlier I’d been working sixty-hour weeks, away three nights out of seven, fitting in my training at nine or ten at night while others were watching TV. I was filling my time with work, training, and trying to live life with Lucja in our home in Edinburgh. Now I was on long-term leave, living thousands of miles away,
barely running, trying to keep safe a little dog who seemed at times to be the most famous pup in the whole world. Normal was a lifetime away.

  I was also concerned about the number of photo requests Gobi got whenever we went out. Most people were great, and I liked that Gobi made people happy, but I knew, for some, she was just a cute photo opportunity.

  Part of the stray dog problem in China stems from people’s buying pedigree dogs, bringing them back to their flats, and then getting annoyed when the dogs make a mess on the floor or trash the furniture. In a country where there’s so much wealth, dogs are sometimes treated as a fashion accessory—temporary and disposable.

  Gobi deserved better than that.

  A month into my stay in Beijing, the result of the rabies test was due.

  All throughout the twenty-nine days we’d spent waiting, my instincts had told me Gobi would be fine. I knew the test would come back clear and we could move on to the next phase of waiting the ninety days for the second round of tests. But as much as I believed this, a part of me had started to wonder. What if Gobi did have rabies after all? What then? If we couldn’t bring Gobi back to the UK, would we move to China to live together? Instead of bringing Gobi home, would we have to bring home to Gobi?

  The result was as we expected. Gobi didn’t have rabies. I exhaled a huge sigh of relief, cheered with Lucja, and shared the news with the rest of the world via our growing social media accounts. The reaction brought a tear to my eye.

  So many strangers were heavily invested in Gobi’s story, and it still amazes me to read of the ways in which she has touched people’s lives. For instance, one woman who has cancer told me that she looks at our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages every day to see what Gobi and I are up to. “I’ve been with you from the start,” she told me.

  I love that the story isn’t just about Gobi and me trying to get home. Whether people have lost their jobs, are suffering with depression, or are going through marriage troubles, this little dog has put a smile on so many people’s faces.

  In the end, it was the running that helped ease my fears. Soon after Gobi’s operation, I was invited by someone I’d met in Urumqi to take part in a single-stage race in a different part of the Gobi Desert. The organizers had gathered fifty of the world’s best sixty-mile specialists for the race in Gansu Province, next to Xinjiang. It’s not a distance I usually run—at least, not as a one-day, point-to-point race—but somehow I was still in pretty good shape from the training I’d managed to put in for the Atacama race I’d skipped.

  But now the Gansu race organizers were offering free lodging and free return flights home to Edinburgh in exchange for me taking part in the sixty-mile run and giving them a PR boost by meeting with journalists. I had quite a few requests for interviews and photo shoots, all of them from journalists interested in getting an update on Gobi and capturing me in action. The thought of being able to use the ticket to fly back and see Lucja again was too tempting to resist.

  Just four days before the race, I received even better news from the race organizers. They had a few spaces still available and were willing to pay to fly in any other elite runners who might want to compete. I called Lucja right away. It was a crazy idea to come all the way to China and run so far at such short notice, especially as six weeks earlier she’d completed a brutal five-day, 300-mile challenge across Holland. But as well as being a world-class runner, who finished thirteenth among the women in the 2016 Marathon des Sables, Lucja’s a tough lady who loves an adventure. She said yes immediately. Forty-eight hours later she was on a plane heading east.

  I was a little worried about Gobi. But Kiki had promised to take good care of her, and I could trust her. Besides, I had the feeling that Gobi wouldn’t mind a few days of serious pampering in Kiki’s recovery pool and grooming parlour.

  As soon as I knew Lucja was coming, I was all in. Running has played a special part in our relationship, and the race coincided with our eleventh wedding anniversary. I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate how far we’d come together.

  One of my favourite memories of running with Lucja comes from the first Marathon des Sables we competed in together. As with most multi-stage ultras, you get your finisher’s medal at the end of the long stage (usually the penultimate stage of the race). I was surprised how well I was doing, and as the long stage came to a close, I knew I had secured my finisher’s spot just outside the top one hundred. For a first-time runner—who almost quit on day one—among thirteen hundred other runners, it wasn’t too bad a result.

  I cleared the final ridge that hid the finish line from view and saw the crowds up ahead, cheering the runners home. And there, a few hundred feet back from the finish, was Lucja. She’d started earlier than me that day, and I hadn’t expected to see her on the course. But there she was, her hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked back in my direction.

  “What are you doing here?” I said when I finally reached her. “I thought you’d have finished an hour ago.”

  “I could have,” she said. “But I wanted to finish with you, so I waited.”

  We crossed the line hand in hand. She could have finished so much higher up, but she chose to wait for me.

  I still think about that when I run today.

  It was good to get back to the desert, good to be able to run without traffic or pollution, and most of all, great to see Lucja. We’d been apart for almost six weeks, and I wanted to spend every minute I could with her. So even though I thought I could have placed fairly well, I was far happier to hang back and run the race together with her.

  The route led us twice around a thirty-mile loop. It was a hot day, easily in the 110s, and as we completed the first lap, we saw that the medical tent was already doing good business. And a bunch of people had decided to throw in the towel and quit. They had started the race far too quickly, had pushed too hard, had struggled in the conditions, and didn’t want to keep pushing through a second loop. I’ve bailed on more than my fair share of training runs, though never because of the heat. It’s the Scottish mud, wind, and rain that send me back to the car.

  We ran the first thirty miles a bit slower than I’d planned, but I figured we still had a good eight hours to get around the rest of the course before the fourteen-hour cut-off.

  As we started the second loop, Lucja had second thoughts.

  “You go, Dion. I don’t have it in me,” she said.

  Lucja and I have run enough races to know when it’s time to throw in the towel and when it’s time to grit it out. I took a long look at her. She was tired, but she was still fighting. This was no time for towels.

  “We can do this,” I said. “I’ve got a television crew following me, and the organizers have really looked after us; we owe it to them. I’ll get you round it. Just stick with me.”

  She did what she does so well and dug in. We kept going, running from marker to marker, ticking the miles off as we went.

  Things got worse, with eighteen miles to go, when a sandstorm struck up. Visibility was cut to less than one hundred feet, and it was getting hard to see the markers. I thought back to the huge sandstorm at the end of the long day when Tommy nearly died. I didn’t have Gobi to look after, but I had Lucja to protect. With no sign of any race officials around us, I started to formulate an emergency plan if the sandstorm got any worse or if Lucja started to tank.

  She didn’t, and the storm eventually lifted, but the winds were still strong. They had blown our hats off, and our eyes stung with sand. Debris was flying everywhere. We pushed on, though we were making slow progress between markers, only moving on to the next one if and when we could see it. Lucja tried taking a gel to give her some energy, but every time she did, she threw it back up again.

  When we reached the next checkpoint, it was a mess, everything blown away and the volunteers looking shell-shocked. We pressed on, though, despite the fact that we were running slower than ever. I thought it was odd that nobody was passing us, but I put all my effort in
to encouraging Lucja to block out the pain and keep going.

  We passed another half-destroyed checkpoint and kept going, knowing that we had eight miles left to run.

  It was dark by now, and when a car approached with its headlights on full, the whole sky lit up. “What are you doing?” the driver asked.

  “We’re racing,” I said, too tired to try and be funny.

  “But a lot of people have been pulled already because of the sandstorm.”

  “Nobody told us at the checkpoint. We’ve only a few miles left, and we’re not stopping now.”

  “Okay then,” he said, before driving off.

  Those last few miles were some of the hardest I’ve ever seen Lucja complete. Amid tears, shouts, and serious pain, she held on to an unshakable determination to finish.

  As we crossed the line, I held her hand.

  “Happy anniversary,” I said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  We got to spend one night together back in Beijing before Lucja had to fly home for work. Kiki met us outside the airport, and yet again Gobi was a hurricane of excitement in the back of the van. This time, though, it wasn’t just me she was licking. Gobi seemed to know instantly that Lucja was special and gave her the full welcoming experience.

  Gobi showed Lucja her affection all night. I crashed soon after we made it back to the flat, but Lucja didn’t get any sleep at all because Gobi decided that an even longer bonding session was required. By the time I woke up, they were inseparable.

  I made some big decisions after the race.

  First, I decided I was going to say no to all interview requests for the rest of my time in Beijing. Some journalists had contacted me during the race, telling me they needed to get a photo of Gobi and asking if they could visit her at Kiki’s place while I was out of town. They’d even gone to the point of directly contacting Kiki, who of course said no. I didn’t like this, as I’d tried hard to keep our location secret.

  Being with Lucja had made me think about what life might be like when Gobi and I finally got home. I was sure there would be some press interest for a week or two, but I knew I’d want life to return to normal as quickly as possible—whatever the new normal would look like. So I made the choice to stop doing interviews. It was time for Gobi and me to go dark.