Watch the students run with the dogs in the video below.
Video credit: Facebook/ Luis Escobar
A retired high school cross country coach and a keen runner in Santa Maria, California, Escobar was featured in the 2011 book “Born to Run,” which documented his other runners’ experiences racing through the Copper Canyons of Mexico.
Escobar was asked about his favorite part of coaching in an interview with Running Warehouse.
He replied: ‘’Life long personal friendships. Creating opportunity for my community. Watching people achieve their personal, social and athletic goals.’’
In 2016, Escobar teamed up with Stacy Silva, the Santa Barbara County Animal Shelter’s coordinator. They both organized a “Dog Run” to help the animals in the shelter to show their energy.
Stacy told KTVU in 2018: “Geographically, we’re very close,”
“I thought, ‘Why aren’t they running our dogs?”
“These are dogs!” Silva told CBS News. “They want to run, they want to play.”
“You’ve got a bunch of dogs that are in cages, and want to be outside running, and I’ve got a group of high school students that love to run,’” Escobar said. “Perfect match.”
In August 2016, Escobar assigned a group of students to run with a dog.
“When the dogs realized that they were getting out of those kennels and to go outside as a group, it was just happy chaos,” Escobar said.
Escobar recorded the video of dogs running with students and posted on his Facebook account, it went viral.
“I am not sure who was more excited and having the most fun…the dogs or the kids,” Escobar said in the caption.
Stacy was overwhelmed to see the partnership with St. Joseph High School was helping her dogs get adopted.
“[The dog] doesn’t have all this pent-up energy it’s trying to show you, just because you’re now paying attention to it,” Stacy told CBS.
After Escobar’s Facebook video went viral a 16-year-old student named Josh Menusa was seen carrying an exhausted terrier named Fred.
“The moment he saw me, oh he starts crying, and I’m like ‘Oh my goodness, he just needs to come with us,’” Menusa told CBS.
Soon, Menusa’s family adopted Fred.
“It makes a huge difference,” Stacy said of the program as a whole.
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