Despite being in Roy for less than a year, Kate Tsyrklevich and her wife have made a difference for animals in need through Heartwood Haven.
The animal sanctuary features various kinds of farm animals, ranging from pigs, geese, roosters and more. Their primary focus centers around animal cruelty cases and the rehabilitation of the animals that are seized from places with poor living conditions.
“Here at Heartwood Haven, we’re a farm sanctuary. We work with law enforcement and animal control on animal cruelty cases,” Tsyrklevich said. “We’ve been rescuing animals for five and a half, almost six years. In that time, we’ve rescued about 1,500 animals from cruelty and neglect.”
Prior to moving to Roy, Tsyrklevich and her wife lived in Gig Harbor. The two began rescuing farm animals while there and rescued their first one in 2017, which was a cockfighting rooster.
“He was just the coolest rooster ever. Every animal has a different personality, and some of them are obsessed with people and very sociable,” Tsyrklevich said. “He was obsessed with us, he’d squawk and flap his wings and do this big show if we didn’t pay attention to him.”
Tsyrklevich said the rooster went on car rides with them to get pizza on Christmas and followed them along for walks through the neighborhood.
“He taught us that roosters are really cool,” she said.
After that, the couple continued to rescue other roosters until they expanded their operation. Since then, they’ve added sheep, pigs and goats.
Tsyrklevich said she realized her passion for animals as she was growing up through summer visits to her great-grandmother’s small farm in the USSR, or what’s now Moldova. Different experiences later in life reaffirmed her love for farm animals.
“She had farm animals like geese, a cow, chickens, dogs, all sorts of animals. Growing up, there were a lot of stray dogs and cats, and I’d always save my lunch for them,” she said. “Then I worked at a veterinary clinic for six years and then I was in a (doctorate) program doing research. I taught at a community college on a variety of sciences from biology to oceanography to environmental systems.”
Tsyrklevich said Heartwood Haven’s primary focus is on pigs, which she said correlates to their intelligence.
“One of the goals of Heartwood Haven is to rescue these animals, rehabilitate them and educate the public about them. We do focus a lot of our efforts on pigs, because they’re one of the smartest animals on Earth,” she said, later adding, “In terms of intelligence, they’re right up there with dolphins.”
She added there are a lot of misconceptions about pigs, who are often considered dirty. She said that isn’t the case and noted the animals won’t use the bathroom in their “housing” area, but will go outside instead.
Tsyrklevich said pigs also decorate the area they live in, give gifts, and solve social issues like humans do.
Heartwood Haven has a working relationship with “most” animal shelters in the area and animal control jurisdictions in Washington, according to Tsyrklevich. She said the sanctuary is currently working to get its rescue pigs spayed and neutered. They have partnered with Oregon State University on the task.
“Oregon State University has the capability to see large animals, and they have the facilities and the equipment to get them in,” she said. “We just had a pig with a bone infection in her hoof and they did surgery on her. She’s recovered now.”
The pigs who will be spayed and neutered were part of seizure of 71 pigs and 16 goats in Deschutes County, Oregon. Tsyrklevich said the animal cruelty case is rare because of how large it is.
Heartwood Haven fenced in a seven acre portion for the different waves of rescue pigs they will receive from the rescue operation. She said they brought in the female pigs so they could stop them from breeding “right away.”
Heartwood Haven went back to Oregon on April 10 to gather the next group of pigs who will be rehabilitated at the sanctuary. Tsyrklevich said they will go back in another week to get the male pigs.
“Our goal is to rehabilitate everyone and spay and neuter them. There’s a huge crisis of too many pigs being born. It’s really bad,” she said. “We’d eventually like to find them homes, too. We’ve already had six pigs leave to go to different rescues.”
Tsyrklevich added they’re unable to take in every farm animal that people have reached out to them about.
“We don’t go out there looking for animals. We have a long, long waiting list of people who want us to take in animals, but our primary focus is on animal cruelty,” Tsyrklevich said. “We have a full inbox of messages like that. I guess our feeling is that those animals still have a human to advocate for them by finding them a new home. On the flip side, you have these cruelty cases where the animals are going to be euthanized or slaughtered, so we do focus our efforts specifically on cruelty and abandonment cases where the animals don’t have any other option.”
Tsyrklevich said the organization doesn’t receive state funding and is reliant on donations.
Those interested in donating or volunteering at the sanctuary can visit Heartwood Haven’s website at heartwoodhaven.org.
