On 25 September, after a walk recorded side by side with another app, a remark: in MushMate you first set up a whole series of things — the dogs, their place on the line — and only then chose the activity. Yet the activity decides the rest: how many dogs can be hitched, when the phone considers that you have stopped, how each dog's load is computed.
What changes for you
- "Free training" opens on "Which activity?": ten pictograms — Canicross, Cani-hiking, Bike, Scooter, Kart, Quad, Sled, Kicksled, Skijoring, Pulka. Your last activity is circled; one tap is enough and takes you straight to the line.
- The line shows the activity at the top ("Canicross · Dryland ▾"): one tap changes it.
- The number of dogs is respected while you compose: at most 2 for canicross, cani-hiking, bike, scooter and skijoring, 3 for the kicksled, 4 for pulka. A dog too many stays on the bench and the screen says why. If you switch to a more limited activity, the line keeps its first dogs, leaders first — and "Undo" brings the others back.
- The surface is no longer asked separately. Snow for the sled, kicksled, skijoring and pulka; dryland for the bike, scooter and kart; for canicross, cani-hiking and the quad, the surface of your last outing, changeable from the same chip.
- Two new activities: cani-hiking (walking with your dogs) and the kicksled (counted as a light 10 kg sled). The scooter, which existed without anyone being able to choose it, joins the list.
- "Today's session" opens straight on the line: the activity, surface and dogs your plan prescribes today are already there, with the target as a reminder ("Plan: 8 km · zone 2"). A resting dog, or one that already ran today, stays on the bench. "Race" takes the activity from your goal's sport. With no planned session, or no sport, the grid opens first.
- "Log a session" also starts with the activity — the same grid, plus the Trotteur —, and the session records it. Until now, a logged session had no activity at all.
What others see
Members of your kennel see the activity on the outing page, as they saw the rig — "Cani-hiking" or "Kicksled" now carry their names there. Nothing public changes.
What it does not do
- Walking has no calibrated pause setting. Cani-hiking now has its own slot, but it starts with the canicross settings: a threshold only moves once it has been measured on real outings, not on an impression.
- No numbers for you to tune. There is no screen of speeds or seconds: nobody would know what to put there, and a bad setting would skew every following outing without anything showing it.
- Your past outings do not change. They keep the activity they were recorded with.
Choices made against the obvious
- The trotteur leaves the GPS start. The trotteur is the carousel where dogs are made to trot: the phone does not move, the GPS measures nothing. It will be logged as a session — duration, dogs — no longer as a tracked outing.
- "On foot / Kicker" becomes three activities. Running, walking and pushing a kicksled do not ask the same of the dogs, and do not stop the same way. An outing recorded as "On foot / Kicker" stays canicross: we do not guess afterwards who was walking.
- The dog limit holds when you compose, not when you leave. Before, the screen objected one step later, on a line already built. Choosing the activity first means never offering an impossible line.