First there was Sloopy. It was the 1960s, after all, and my high school-aged sisters chose the name from one of their favorite songs. He was the almost-white Labrador retriever who played with me every afternoon when I got home from elementary school. For a while Sloopy was my only friend when we moved across town and I hadn’t yet met any of the kids in our new neighborhood. He lived long and well, and when he died, my mother and my sisters and I cried for what seemed like hours. Daddy was in England at the time, staying at the Savoy Hotel. When we called to tell him that Sloopy had died, he said we would eventually get another dog, and maybe we could name him Savoy. We did.

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