When Harry Met Minny, Martha Teichner

I don’t know why I decided to read this book. I could tell from the title I knew where it was headed – heartbreak. Maybe it was because I miss my pitbull? Anyway, it’s a story on bull terriers. A love story of friendship and companionship. It’s characters in a unique story, a very NY story, about friendship and community, about life and death. A chance meeting brings people together who develop into close friends through their love for bull terriers. As in Martha and Carol, who become fast friends, as Carol fights a losing battle with cancer. Life seems to steal the time as the days get shorter, their worlds smaller, and the ways harder as cancer takes its toll on Carol. Questions are raised. Why do we fall in love with animals instantly and forgive them for their faults but find it so much harder to make human friends? Establishing friendships, especially as you get older, becomes harder and harder. Though fortunately, by chance, this is what occurs. Martha wrote this book because she didn’t want to stop living the story of what happened between two dogs – Harry and Minnie… even the sad parts, or the unexpected friendship. And in the end, through all that emotion of love and heartache, she is thankful to Carol and Harry for the time their worlds collided together, however brief.