{"id":542,"date":"2016-07-01T15:28:01","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T15:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/?p=542"},"modified":"2016-07-22T15:39:42","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:39:42","slug":"walking-driving-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/2016\/07\/01\/walking-driving-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking (And Driving) The Talk"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n \"Ron\n
Ron and Marlene Izatt stopped by the college to have lunch with veterinary students Erika Wakabayashi, Melanie Peel, Jessica Rigling, and Laurel Anderson.<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

A veterinary college is chock full of people who love animals. From highly skilled surgeons in the hospital, to investigators in the laboratories, to students who volunteer at shelters, they all work hard to provide the best possible lives for animals. Outside the college, but integrally connected, is another group of animal lovers: those who work as partners by learning about college goals, and providing the missing pieces needed to reach new heights of excellence.<\/p>\n

Ron and Marlene Izatt are that kind of animal lover. At home on their acreage in southeast Washington, they have two dogs and a horse, but in the past, they have had as many as four horses, four dogs, and four cats. It seems to depend on what their neighbors are up to.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe neighbor\u2019s dog brought Miss Poppy home when she was about six months old,\u201d says Marlene. \u201cShe ran with that dog for a month or two, but because she wasn\u2019t potty-trained, they left her outside in the dead of winter. You can\u2019t do that with a Chihuahua, so another neighbor took her home, and I offered to potty-train her.\u201d\u00a0 One thing led to another, and Miss Poppy ended up a member of the Izatt family. Lucky dog.<\/p>\n

Their other dog, Jackson, was dropped off at a farm nearby. \u201cThey get a lot of dogs dropped off out there, so they were going to shoot him,\u201d says Marlene. \u201cI went and got him and was bringing him home, driving 60 miles per hour down the highway, and the poor dog apparently thought I was going to drop him off again so he climbed into my lap . . . and he is a big dog!\u201d Marlene took Jackson to a rescue group, but she felt so terrible, imagining him in a car headed somewhere else, she called the group and asked to adopt him. \u201cThey had already shipped Jackson to a shelter in Portland, and had him on a website for adoption, so I drove down and got him, and he\u2019s been ours ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Izatts also drove way out of their way to get their horse: about 300 miles to the Steens Mountains in southeast Oregon. There the Bureau of Land Management is desperately in need of adoptive families for their 40,000 wild mustangs. \u201cI really try to get people to go there and get horses from them, because they are such awesome animals,\u201d says Marlene.<\/p>\n

Now the Izatts are showing their love of animals by supporting veterinary students.<\/p>\n

Ron Izatt is an OSU alumnus, but he and Marlene were more familiar with the hospital at Washington State University, where they had received excellent care for their dog. They had been discussing ways to help support the WSU hospital, when a chance meeting with OSU Dean of Pharmacy, Mark Zabriskie, steered them in another direction. \u201cHe said, \u2018But you are an OSU alumni; wouldn\u2019t you like to help us?\u2019\u201d says Ron. Zabriskie gave them a quick update on the accomplishments of the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine, and encouraged them to investigate further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went on the internet to look up OSU Vet Med and I was really impressed,\u201d says Ron. After several conversations with Development Director Kelley Marchbanks, the Izatts made a decision: as part of their estate planning, they have committed funds to establish the Ronald and Marlene Izatt Veterinary Endowed Scholarship Fund, which will provide a full-ride, expenses-paid, fourth year for an exceptional veterinary student. This estate gift will have a big impact on the future, but the Izatts also wanted to help now, so they provided additional funds to support a scholarship this year.<\/p>\n

Why did they choose scholarship funding? \u201cVet students have a tremendous debt, and don\u2019t earn as much as medical doctors,\u201d says Ron. In fact, the average debt for a graduating veterinary student in the U.S. is $150,000, and the average starting salary is $68,000. The OSU College of Veterinary Medicine works hard to provide scholarship relief for their students. In 2016, every student in the college who applied for scholarships, received some level of support. That could not have been done without friends like Ron and Marlene Izatt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A veterinary college is chock full of people who love animals. From highly skilled surgeons in the hospital, to investigators in the laboratories, to students who volunteer at shelters, they all work hard to provide the best possible lives for animals. Outside the college, but integrally connected, is another group of animal lovers: those who… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3FFxI-8K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/animalconnection\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}