Stray dog falls in love with marathon runner during desert run

A stray dog won the heart of an extreme marathon runner, after tagging along while he raced across the Gobi desert in China.

Extreme marathon runner Dion Leonard noticed the small stray dog on the first day of the 4 Deserts Race Series, the Independentreported. Leonard thought the dog would drop away from the runners, but instead, on day two of the weeklong race, he noticed the small dog was running beside him.

"I didn't speak much to her that day thinking she wouldn't stay with me, but at the finish line she followed me into the tent, and we slept next to each other,” he told the Independent. “That was it then."

He named her Gobi.

The duo became inseparable during the race, and Leonard told the Independent it was hard leaving China for his home in Edinburgh, Scotland, without her.

To raise funds for Gobi to travel to Scotland, Leonard set up a crowdfunding page with the goal of raising 5,000 British pounds.

As of Friday, the page raised over 12,000 British pounds.

Leonard told Inside Edition he hired people to weed through the "red tape" involved with getting approval for an animal to travel to another country.

He told Inside Edition, he hopes Gobi will be in Scotland by Christmas.

In the meantime, she’s living with one of the race organizers in China.

"I can’t wait until she comes,” he told Inside Edition.