When Martha Teichner says, “Humor takes courage”, she could also say this book takes courage. It took courage to write When Harry Met Minnie, and a type of courage to read the book, knowing this is a nonfiction book that involves death and tears. Teichner certainly had to find strength to write this story.

You might know Martha Teichner from CBS news, reporting from around the world, or from CBS Sunday Morning. Unless you run into her in New York City, though, you won’t know her as the owner of beloved bull terriers. Since 1994, she likes to meet up with other dog people at Union Square farmers market early on Saturday morning. That habit brought new people, and a new dog, into her life.

In July, 2016, Teichner and her bull terrier, Minnie, are still mourning the loss of her other dog, Goose. At the farmers market, Martha and Minnie run into Stephen Miller Siegel, who asks about Goose. When he learns Goose is dead, he pulls out a picture of a dog, and says his friend, Carol Fertig, is dying of liver cancer due to exposure to toxins in the city after 9/11, and she’s desperate to find the right home for her older bull terrier, Harry.

Teichner and Carol want to make sure their dogs will accept each other. A good part of the book is about their efforts to bring the two bull terriers together for visits, and, eventually sleepovers. While Teichner is still unsure whether she wants to take on an aging dog with medical problems, Carol tells all of her friends that Martha Teichner is taking Harry. It slowly dawns on Teichner that Carol is giving up Harry so she can “get on with the business of dying”.

Teichner learns so much from Carol Fertig, a woman with a gift for friendship. Those friends are there for Carol, fighting for her treatment right to the end of her life. And, Martha Teichner is there for Carol and for Harry. While the book is emotional, it’s also funny at times. Teichner shares the correspondence between the two as well as her made-up stories about the dogs. Carol can see the funny side of life until the pain becomes too much to bear. Even the story of the attempts to scatter Carol’s ashes are funny, maybe not at the time they happened, but in retrospect.

This is a story of dogs and unexpected friendship, a moving book. It’s an account of the ability of dogs to bring strangers together. When Harry Met Minnie does not have a happy ending, but, then, this is life, not a novel. It’s a moving account of two strangers brought together at just the right moment in their lives.

When Harry Met Minnie by Martha Teichner. Celadon Books, 2021. ISBN 9781250212535 (hardcover), 245p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent a copy of the book, hoping I would review it.