An Open Letter to Bob Barker

Dear Mr. Barker,

One of my foster families saw a feature about you on a CBS morning show. They heard you mention that you planned to die broke because you’re giving all your money to animal welfare agencies and causes. I would love this opportunity to plead ICHBA’S case in hopes that maybe you’ll direct some of your hard earned and plentiful cash towards the rural south. Because of leash and fence laws that aren’t enforced, animal overpopulation is an epidemic in Robertson County, Tennessee. We desperately need your help down here.

I Could Have Been Adopted (ICHBA) is a grass roots, nonprofit, animal welfare group located in Robertson County, Tennessee that is just beginning to make a difference. I founded the agency in November of 2012 with the mission to rescue, spay/neuter, and re-home 100 dogs or cats per year. But I’ve assembled an ambitious lot of volunteers, and we had exceeded our goal by 20% in 2013, rehoming a total of 120 animals. Up to date, we’ve re-homed 147 dogs and cats. My group consists of eight foster families that provide food, love, and shelter for ICHBA-sponsored animals while I organize their vetting needs plus their rehoming campaigns.

But exceeding our primary goal wasn’t nearly good enough for my enthusiastic organization. We also educate the public about the benefits of spaying and neutering by publishing twice-monthly articles for a local paper, the Robertson County Connection. Our stance about spaying and neutering animals is inflexible. In fact, we refuse to re-home our sponsored dogs or cats to any family with an unfixed animal on their property.

Mr. Barker, we have so many future dreams that you can help make real. We’d love to build a facility where we can isolate and vet animals before placing them with foster families. We’d love to raise our goal from rehoming and neutering 100 animals per year to 200 per year.

We would appreciate any donation to our non-profit, grass roots organization. And we promise every penny will go to helping animals. If you feel like our group doesn’t meet your standards, we won’t harbor hard feelings. We admire everything you do for abandoned and abused animals.

Thank you,

Donna Wilkins, ICHBA Founder