For Cloud9 founder Sarah Inkinen-Fritz, Zermatt and her Cavalier, Bijou, belong to the same story. Sarah moved to Zermatt shortly before the Covid pandemic. When travel and public life suddenly came to a standstill, she found herself experiencing the village at an unusually quiet and unhurried pace.

During that period, she met her neighbour's Cavalier, Pacco, and fell in love with the breed. In 2021, she decided to welcome a Cavalier of her own. She named him Bijou after her home in Zermatt.

'Bijou is not simply my dog. He is my soulmate, the kindest soul I know,' she says. 'He is inseparable from my life in Zermatt and from that rare period when the world slowed down enough for me to discover a different kind of happiness.’

Bijou also became the emotional blueprint for the retreat. Sarah wanted the weekend to carry the qualities she associates with him: warmth, generosity, kindness, presence and ease. Cavaliers are famously affectionate and devoted. They follow their owners from room to room, curl up close whenever they can and seem to read emotion in a human face.

'They become our little shadows,' Sarah says. 'When you look into their eyes, there is something deeply soulful about them. They stay close through ordinary days, but also through loss, uncertainty and change.'