We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Floss Blackburn . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Floss below.

Alright, Floss thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

From the time I was a small child I knew that I was drawn to helping and rescuing animals.

My heart has always been drawn to them, and it is definitely something that was not supported or nurtured in May growing up with my family.

It was at the age of 24 that I finally realized that it was OK to be who I am and to pursue the path that I feel I was want to walk.

Founding, Denkai Animal Sanctuary has been an extremely spiritually guided journey for me. I have been doing this now for over 20 years. I have always been very much feel that this is what I have been meant to do in this lifetime.

The need for large animal rescue is worldwide and was the main reason for my founding of Denkai, however, it branched quickly into aiding and rescuing, small pet animals such as dogs and cats as well.

I originally founded the organization with not a dime in my pocket, going through a bankruptcy and an ugly divorce, with two very small children, aged three years and about one year old at the time.

I had to learn everything from the ground up with this, but knew that the mission was very much needed as the cruelty and neglect in our area in regard to horses farm animals. Dogs and cats was widespread.

Nothing about this nonprofit has been an easy road by any means it is not something that most people would have been able to stick with, I don’t believe in the path that it has taken for me.

However, to date we have provided aid through low cost veterinary care, hands-on animal, rescue. I have led teams for law-enforcement; state, national, county and city. More than 30,000 animals have been helped over the past 20 years..

Floss, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Originally, I started this path of work through volunteering with a local, no kill animal shelter, and ended up running their mobile adoptions. From there, I branched into founding Denkai about a year later.

The mission of our organization is to provide aid to animals in crisis, mustang horses, domestic, and farmed animals.

We provide rescue rehabilitation and rehoming services. Denkai also works to provide low cost veterinary care. I we provide education and outreach for our community aid with veterinary bills for those in need as well as food bank services.

The organization also aids state and local, law-enforcement with neglect and cruelty cases on the ground.

Denkai consists of two separate facilities.

One near Yellow Jacket, Colorado where our large animals are rescued and rehabilitated.

The other in Cortez Colorado this is a storefront facility that provides pet adoptions during the day low cost veterinarian services and a retail store where proceeds benefit the rescues we serve.

Denkai is not government funded. We operate through program, income foundation, support, fundraisers, and direct public and corporate contributions.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I think, founding this nonprofit has been all about resilience.

In the very beginning, there was no money initially I had to learn the hard way we had no social media and I still had rescued animals needing to eat and have veterinary care provided to them every day.

I sacrificed everything with myself did not take his good care of myself as I should have, but I sure made sure those animals never went without.

I sacrificed pay for the first 10 years in order to keep the nonprofit going and the animals fed.

The very first facility we were in was off grid had no running water, no electricity when we got into it we had to fix the well so that we could draw water and did our best to patch together the solar panels learned how to operate them and had a little bit of electricity here in there. The house was a complete disaster, freezing cold in the winter, and I definitely paid a price for living that way until we could get into a better place.

The road and path that I have traveled with this nonprofit has been incredibly hard. I think it definitely would have broken, most people, emotionally and physically.. I do believe that because I am so passionate about helping these animals and caring for them and feeling what they feel that is wet drove me to push through the hard times.

There are so many stories for this, but I would definitely say in a nutshell while I started out with the warm, fuzzy, feeling that I just wanted to help and rescue animals and everything would be rainbows and unicorns. It has been anything but that.

I have found that many people are not kind that jealousy is a green monster then I have had to fight like hell constantly to save this nonprofit so many times, and to grow it, and to protect it. None of that is anything that I expected going into this industry, and this business.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Throughout the past 20 years, I have had to pivot multiple times within this nonprofit.

There are many significant stories for me on this one, but I will say that where once our organization was mostly driven by pet animal adoptions, and the funding and support that came in for that in the recent years, there has been a large shift in adoptions and people who are willing to help these pets, so with that huge decline, came a decline on every other level as well so we have had to shift into other income, bringing opportunities and shift how we handle adoptions and adoption fees for these animals.

It has been extremely interesting and without the ability to change and push forward I think most nonprofits will either suffer or eventually just have to close down so I continue to try to stay on the cutting edge of keeping the doors open and problem, solve how we can keep our funding going, and be self sustainable, rather than rely on only donor dollars or foundation support .

Contact Info:

• Website: www.denkaisanctuary.org
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/DenkaiSanctuary

Image Credits
Credit Floss Blackburn