A touring kennel does not prepare a race: it runs its dogs several times a day, for clients, for a whole season. Until now, MushMate could only describe a race or maintenance objective, and a touring season entered as a "stage race" received a long-distance race plan. Season tours are an objective of their own, filed in your season next to your race or maintenance objectives. And it isn't sled-only: each formula has its activity — sled, kart with passengers, canicross hiking, bikejoring —, and one season mixes them.
What changes
Your rest limits. When you create it: rounds at most per dog per day, rounds at most over 7 days, days without an outing over those 7 days. And for each formula (sled ride, kart passengers, two-hour canicross hike…), its activity, its dogs per team — one to three per hiker or rider —, and a dog's rest after a first round — twice as long after the day's second, three times after the third: a dog that has done three rounds rests longer than one that has done one.
The day. Slots (the time, the formula, the teams), and for every dog of the season a word: "Can go", "Back at 11:00", "3 rounds out of 3 today", "Rest day". "Propose the teams" fills them with the dogs that can go, the least used of the week first.
The convoy. A single phone records the GPS; when you stop, MushMate writes one outing per team, in its formula's activity, with its dogs and its people — a sled's or a kart's passengers, the hiker or the rider. Then the three-choice return: "All good", "A dog to check", "Later".
The day on dryland. Each slot says "Snow" or "Dryland", with the forecast for its time; on a morning without snow, "Whole day on dryland" switches every planned slot, and the convoy leaves on a kart.
Before winter. Enter your busiest week — its slots, the teams per slot — and the season answers in one sentence: "You are 4 dogs short for your busiest week." Then, during the season, each dog with its rounds, its forced departures and its kilometres.
A race at the same time. The season never takes a dog away from your race plan anymore. In the composer, a dog that has a session of its plan that day says so; in the plan, a session says how many of its dogs are on tours.
What others see
Kennel members read the season, the slots and the statuses; the owner and the handler compose. Clients appear nowhere: no name, no booking — only how many there are and their weight on board.
What it does not do
No generated preparation plan, no booking or payment, no GPS per team. The race plan does not subtract planned rounds: only completed rounds weigh in a dog's load. The forecast gives the temperature, not the snow: switching to dryland stays your call.
The choices we made against the obvious
No pre-filled limit. A professional musher gave us values close to double the ones we would have proposed: a default taken from a single kennel would have been wrong for the others. They are yours.
No generated plan. A wrong plan is exactly what opened this work; as long as we do not know what good touring-season preparation is, the season does not invent one. Prepare your dogs with a maintenance objective or "In my hands".
One outing per team, not one per convoy. A dog's load is shared among the dogs of its outing: a single outing of eighteen dogs would divide one sled's weight by eighteen. So each team has its outing, with the convoy's distance — and its activity: a hiker and their dog don't pull a loaded kart.
The race plan does not move. We could have removed the planned rounds from its sessions: that is a change to the load model, and we will not make it without knowing which race a touring kennel really prepares. The two screens tell each other what is happening; the musher decides.
The largest formula drives the shortage. An average would hide the formula that empties the kennel.
The lead comes from your rounds. The proposal puts at lead a dog you have already put at lead in a round. On the first day, you choose it.