Moth Story Slam winner Anne Abel Shares Healing Power of Pets in 'Mattie, Milo and Me'

In Mattie, Milo, and Me, Moth StorySLAM winner, Anne Abel, shares her moving memoir about the role her dogs, Mattie and Milo, played in her journey of recovery from her traumatic childhood. Her first dog was Mattie, one she took in when her son was 10 years old, and ended up falling completely in love with. However, when Mattie died suddenly and unexpectedly, this lead Abel to fall back into a severe depression previously caused by her past family trauma. To distract her from Mattie’s death, Abel went to the animal shelter to find another dog, who they named Milo, and subsequently turned out to be quite aggressive. She found out later that her family was the third family he had been placed with in 18 months. Thinking back, how was Abel able to work with such a difficult pet? “I think it was such a pivotal time in my life. It was such a, kind of, out-of-body experience working with him… but I remember it like it was yesterday… Those scenes that are in that book, you know, they were just so dramatic for me. It was a big deal for me to do this… I didn’t want a dog in the first place, and then we got Mattie who was just a little stuffed animal, was perfect… and then, [Milo] was a monster. He really was a monster… the rescue guy, he’s a real salesman. We do think he was sedated when we met him… I didn’t think about it a lot because… I just had to put all my energy into this dog… after we said we would take him… [the rescue guy] put him in his cage and then he made us walk through the kennels to see, and there was Milo… in the corner on a bed of rags just curled up and he looked so pathetic and so sad, and that image just stuck with me for good and for bad… I think that deep down I knew what it felt like not to be wanted… I think I wanted to do for Milo what I wished someone had been able to do for me. I think that was probably the driving force.”

For Abel, one of the things she learned from taking care of Milo was to ask for and accept help. His great size, initial aggression, and strength made it difficult for her to handle him alone. She remarked, “I had been taught as a child not to ask for help, that I was a burden enough, but for Milo’s sake, I had to ask for help. I learned that there are people out there, lots of people out there, that want to help you, want to help Milo, and it meant a lot to me. It taught me to be more comfortable reaching out and asking for help.”