In her new time slot (6 p.m. to 9 p.m EST, Radio KSBN AM 1230, Spokane, Wa and Roth Show Affiliates), it’s about supper time when Conservative orphans tune in to the Roth show.
It’s during lonely hours spent in a cage in the pound or the cold night barn--any time--when “orphans in fur” try to find Laurie Roth.
The stories of how two dogs found their way to the stand-up-for-the-little-guy Lady of the Airwaves, are as heartwarming as she is.
If radio waves are the siren call for disenfranchised Conservatives, the inexplicable animal radar to be found in lonely barns and the fearsome cage down at the local pound are the two places from which two furry friends determined to make themselves permanent fixtures in the Life and Times of Laurie Roth.
They say an animal you rescue never forgets and Roth, held in special category by the unconditional love the pets she once rescued give her, is living proof.
It was uncanny how Roth found herself at Spokanimal, a pound-like place where dogs are kept three days before being put to sleep, just one day after her precious dog, Moose died suddenly of a twisted intestine on the way to the vets.
Little could have diverted Roth’s attention in the devastation she felt about her 10-year-old chow’s sudden death.
“I was so devastated and did what they say you shouldn’t do,” Roth recalled. “I got in my car and drove to the bigger city of Spokane to find another Chow.”
When Roth found Muffin, her time was fast running out. She had been in her cage for “three days, minus three hours.”
The sign on the cage identifying her read “Chow Mix”, and Roth knew instantly that this was her dog. Muffin, held captive where she did not want to be, was listless and depressed. “So I hopped into the cage, mess and all, just so no one could take her away to be put down before I could adopt her and get her out of there.”
It was going to take more than a pat on the head and the promise of a bone to lure Muffin out of her deep depression.
On the long drive home, Muffin the Rescued, used the getaway car as her personal bidet. To the pent up Lady Chow, a cage, mobile or not, was still a cage. “So with one hand and while still driving, I grabbed a towel and tried coaxing her to sit on the towel in the front seat. Mercifully, she fell asleep for the last hour of the trip,” Roth explained.
The talk show host was headed for her parents’ place where she had been staying two weeks of the month (“I was doing CD Highway on PBS at the time and traveling a lot.”).
The next scene comes straight out of the song, If We Could Talk to the Animals. Muffin leapt out of the car, at first staying at a stand still and staring intensely all around her. “Then this depressed little beauty started twirling around, jumping up and down and oozing pure joy,” Roth recounted. It was if it had finally registered on her that this was a great home with wide open running space instead of a cage and a new Mom to boot.”
That was nine years ago. “Muffin is still one of my precious treasures,” Roth reports. “She is there to remind me of redemption, second chances in life and God’s grace.”
In fact, the name of Roth’s soon to be production company is Muffin Head Productions, the company that will someday own the majority of the also soon to be launched Cold Justice. It adds to Roth’s feeling of accomplishment that the new business will be named after a once “lonely girl” who found a second life with a special lady.
Roth, who suffered an almost fatal motorcycle accident in 2005, knows all about the Muffins in real life: “Any chance of success and production attempted is a miraculous gift of God, and aren’t we all a bunch of Muffin heads, recovering, barely surviving various things and trying to live our lives and achieve something anyway?”
Next to the Roth household came the irrepressible Scooter, barn owl in fur, whose tail wags as proudly as the flag of any country.
Scooter started off life in a dumped litter of puppies in the remote country where Roth lives with husband, Rich and their two adopted children.
“Some nice lady found the abandoned puppies and placed Scooter with a family up on the hill, a half mile from where I live,” Roth explained.
When the radio talk show host first met Scooter, he was all oversized paws and thumping tail.
“At seven months old, he would follow Ashley and Muffin, my two Chows. (Ashley, now deceased was a Lion Chow)m but Scooter, who would follow the Chows back home, never wanted to leave once he got there.
“So I would do my show, then right after, plop Scooter in the car and return him to his house on the hill.”
But Roth couldn’t help but notice that every time she dropped Scooter off to his homestead, he would run right back to the car.
“That concerned me. I was then told by Scooter’s “adoptive parents” that he was one of the dumped puppies and had survived Parvo Disease, but they despised him. Scooter had this habit of getting into the garbage and his human companions hated that.”
When not at Roth’s house, Scooter was kept in a cold barn where he never knew the comfort of a human touch.
“I was starting to understand why Scooter followed me and my dogs home almost daily,” Roth continued.
“After two months of this and with the family throwing hints of my adopting him my way, I approached my husband about it. Rich was totally against adopting Scooter because we already had two dogs, who insisted on climbing into our car no matter where we were headed.
“All the same, I was getting won over by Scooter and and was very concerned about this precious playful boy.
“Finally one day, Scooter came bolting down the hill above our little house and he had a huge wound in his rib cage. I could see that he would need surgery and stitches--and soon.
“I called the owner and explained that Scooter needed to get to a vet, like NOW.
“The owner wouldn’t even come down the road to see how Scooter was or to assess his status.
“When she told me to put a few bandage strips over the wound, I made a decision right there, It would be a cold day in Hell before I ever took this dog back to her house.
“I knew Rich would be mad but I figured I’d argue it out with him. I accepted the owner’s invitation to adopt the dog that day and said I would be responsible for taking him to the vet right away.
“That was five and a half years ago.
When Scooter first came into the Roth house for good, he seemed to know it. “I will never forget how he ran straight to the couch, where he fell asleep immediately--cone head from his surgery and all!”
“When he finally awoke, he continued his doze on our bed as if he owned the place, and I cannot remember a night since when his pillows and blankets haven’t been on our bed.”
Scooter was naturally potty trained and yet had never been a house dog.
Scooter is 6 now, and Her Ladyship Muffin, a happy 9 1/2. They are both members of the Roth family, along with the two children who were also adopted.
Meanwhile, it will come as no surprise that the siren call of radio talk show hostess Laurie Roth goes beyond humans to the animal realm.
The “orphans of the airwaves”, Americans frustrated about what is happening to their country, have long sought out Dr. Laurie Roth.
On air, Laurie Roth, “Annie Oakley of the Airwaves” is fearless when it comes to corrupt politicians and deadly terrorists.
