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Hope In The Wild West stars Floss Blackburn who after two decades rescuing animals has saved 30,000 souls...and counting. ​
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The Unfolding Adventures of Floss Blackburn
The Denkai Launch: At first glance you probably wouldn’t know it, but Floss Blackburn is an animal heroine. It’s true; she’s quite passionate about helping underdogs and even uber pigs. Floss has always been drawn to the special needs of animals in peril. At age six, she rescued her first kitten from a bush behind a local liquor store. At age 13, she found her first puppy, endlessly screaming as he’d been dumped to die in a canyon ditch. In 2004, newly divorced with two very young children in tow, and now just age twenty-four, Floss founded Denkai Animal Sanctuary.
This magical animal paradise prospered and in 2012, Floss expanded her charity’s services by building a low-cost veterinary clinic that provided animal care to underserved Northern Colorado citizens. That same year, Floss negotiated this veterinary facility purchase, which each year provided 20,000 animal medical procedures.
Then, ten years into her rescue career, the unstoppable Floss honed her people skills. In 2014, her charity purchased another building to create its first adoption center. Soon, each and every month, Denkai saved one to two hundred pets by securing foster and forever homes.​
The Girl Becomes A Woman: Spending her early years blossoming in the Southwest wilderness, Floss grew resilient as her forest guide father traipsed Floss throughout the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Remarkably, though still a toddler, her dad provided Floss alone time in the woods, so she could watch Big Horn Sheep race past her tiny frame. Lucky for us, mountain lions don’t eat flowers and Floss budded into a sturdy, strong woman.
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Today, she’s still pure country and feels at home in the middle of a cattle drive, rafting on a furious white water river, galloping in a horse’s saddle or lingering solo on a backcountry hiking escapade. Guess bears don’t scare her. But sheep sure as heck bother her.​
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Collaboration and Community Remain Denkai Hallmarks: To this day, Floss supports countless animal rescue groups including those on Native American reservations. In fact, nothing makes her happier than counseling and contributing to fledgling animal rescue charities. Courtesy of its indefatigable leader, Floss has led dozens of successful rescues and abuse prosecutions with the ASPCA and the Humane Society, supporting several Colorado, New Mexico and California Sheriff departments.
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In January 2022, Floss saved six abandoned and starving horses left for months alone at 10,000 . Here snowmobiles guide them down the mountain to food, water, trailers and safety.
Who & Why Floss? Because Floss Blackburn is a resourceful innovator working to build a better future for our planet by finding meaningful solutions to the most pressing animal rescue challenges.
Of Italian, English, Irish, German and God knows what else mutt heritage, Floss Speranza Blackburn was born in 1979, but can't fully explain her own mysterious origin. Though her name could provide a clue. While her parents passed down their grandmother's names: Floss (Flowering) and Speranza (Hope), in fact these prophetic monikers behave like tossed gauntlets, because Floss' rescue work demands that she bridle enormous obstacles on a daily basis.
Coming Home: Floss has now returned to her hometown, Cortez, Colorado, which lies in one of America’s lasting pioneer, Wild West places. Situated 50 miles from Durango in the 2,040 square mile wide Montezuma County, this rural and predominately conservative town on the Colorado Plateau attracts ranchers, cowboys, Indians and outlaws, a diverse community of rugged souls who crave its utterly self-reliant way of life.
This Four Corners area also borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona and though Cortez is perched high, where the air is thin, the views are spectacular and the history is rich, today drug criminals run rampant. In fact, the Mexican drug cartel delivers meth, heroin and fentanyl using Cortez as its porous drug trafficking corridor.​ ​
To weather life in Cortez, Colorado an infamous locale, Floss is equal measure sunny and funny and feisty and ferocious. A contrast of firm, yet delicate, with a whole lot of personality paradoxes, Floss is a true cowboy, and that is a true compliment.
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Animals love Floss, and vice versa, even kissing wolves!
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On The Move Again. Since Floss has too much tumbleweed in her blood to truly settle down, in 2017, she relocated her family and Denkai from Weld County, Colorado to Montezuma County, Colorado.
For the past four years, Denkai has provided animal services in Cortez, Colorado, which almost completely lacks public animal services. She purchased a downtown Cortez Denkai Animal Sanctuary thrift store that provides a place for the public to shop and adopt and help sustain their ongoing animal rescues and medical services across the USA.
