Heiko was born in our first litter of Bernese, we kept him and litter sister Madi, both were wonderful house dogs and had fantastic temperaments and characters. We had shown Heiko a few times as you will see from his show results, he was never a big winner at shows but as far as we were concerned he was the best. He was assessed as a therapy dog and was a frequent visitor to a local residential care home with his sister Madi. He loved all the attention given to him on our visits. He was also temperament tested by the BMDC of GB where he achieved an excellent in the test, Heiko was a gentle dog and he lived his life with us to the full, he loved his walks and always had a great time on the North Yorkshire Moors. We only had one litter from him and that was to our Belgian imported female Casji.

About 75 yards from our house is a farmhouse where friends lived, they loved our dogs to go over there and play in the orchard and beautiful gardens. Heiko spent many happy hours over there playing, he would sit and wait at the gate or door to the farmhouse for his treat, he would sit with the other dogs patiently waiting for the gate to be opened so he could start to play.

It was a very sad day when we had to make the decision to give him rest, he had been suffering from a heart problem for a few months and in the space of a matter of days he deteriorated badly. We have a wonderful vet who has looked after all our dogs, he came to our house to give Heiko peace in the place he loved.