Racing after piglets through the sweltering jungle is what Sarah Bahan calls “fun.”

“I don’t usually chase too many piglets around UC Davis,” says Bahan, vice president of International Veterinary Outreach, a nonprofit club run by 25 UCD School of Veterinary Medicine students that organizes winter and summer trips to bring free veterinary care to places that need it.

Recently, the group has been focusing on the remote villages near Jiquilillo in northwestern Nicaragua, where veterinary care is scarce and many residents depend on farm animals for their livelihoods. This June 9-19, IVO members, joined by American and Nicaraguan veterinarians, will spend two weeks commuting between villages treating residents’ pigs, cows, dogs, cats and just about “any animal they bring to us,” Bahan said.

The tough conditions of the trip, which include extreme heat and long hours, offer students unique fieldwork experience — like chasing down piglets so they can be dewormed, vaccinated and castrated — that prepares them to handle anything from “a camel in Kenya” to “a reindeer in Mongolia” in the future, Bahan explained.

On their winter 2012 trip to Nicaragua, the team performed 874 treatments on 232 animals, including 234 vaccinations, 370 parasite treatments and 23 castrations.

The IVO students who go on the trip pay their own way, and drugs and supplies are donated by pet food companies and animal hospitals. The club also fundraises and receives about $1,000 in grants each year.

“It’s really important for us to work with underserved communities,” said Bahan, a second-year veterinary student. “We spend all day just treating every animal we can.”

“There are animals that live in lots of rural areas in the world … that never get exposure to any kind of acute regular or even emergency medical care because their owners live in a place where resources, both financial and logistic, are lacking,” Dr. Eric Davis, an associate veterinarian at UCD, said in a phone interview.

Dr. Davis, who has 18 years of experience providing veterinary care to rural communities in the United States and Central America, became IVO’s faculty adviser in 2011 after he was visited by a group of UCD veterinary students who convinced him to help them form the service group. He went with the students on their first trip to Nicaragua to train them on how to set up a rural animal clinic.

“They started (IVO) from scratch,” he said, praising the students’ efforts. “I think they’re doing a terrific job.”

The team gives each animal a physical exam, a general wellness check, as well as vaccinations, deworming, spaying, neutering and castration when needed.

One of IVO’s goals is to promote animal welfare, which sometimes means castrating, neutering or spaying animals.

Some Jiquilillo residents castrate their pigs at adult age, which increases the animal’s pain and risk of infection and poses a safety risk for the person who has to catch and hold down the 150-pound hog during the procedure.

On a recent trip, Bahan and her teammates were chasing down piglets so they could castrate them before they turned a month old, a much safer option.

The veterinary students also spay and neuter some dogs to prevent the abundance of neglected strays.

“Animals that are unwanted not only live a miserable existence but are also a source of disease,” Davis said. “So being able to control the population of dogs to a level where they are wanted and cared for is a valuable thing to do.”

Because IVO visits Jiquilillo only twice a year, the group has made efforts to show local community members how to safely perform simple procedures like castration or how to recognize the signs of external parasites on their own. They also offer advanced training to the Nicaraguan veterinarians and veterinary students who join them on the trip.

Club members also try to capture the interest of children by bringing coloring books on how to care for dogs properly. “The kids are usually the most engaged,” Bahan said.

Davis said the level of veterinary care many Americans enjoy is often taken for granted.

“We are fortunate enough to live in what is really a very, very affluent society. … The real world is living in a dirt-poor hut that might or might not have electricity,” he pointed out.

“I started advising (IVO) because it seemed like an eager group of young professional school students who wanted to do something good,” he said. “I’m a strong believer, and I think that IVO students are strong believers as well, that we (have to) make the world a better place.”

And apart from the valuable field skills and the enjoyment that comes from promoting animal welfare and good health, Bahan said there was one last reward at the end of a long day in Jiquilillo, Nicaragua — the beach.

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