"Why 2.28? Why danger?" That was the question from a musher looking at ten dogs, all at the same level, all in red. The answer existed — it was just hidden behind a number. It is now on screen.
What you see
Under a dog's badge, "Understand this number". On the desktop Pack page, the right-hand panel widens and the list stays visible; on the dog's page it is the same thing at full width; on the phone, the dog's page now has a Load card that opens a sheet.
The answer comes first: the number, a word (balanced, caution, danger) with its shape — circle, square, triangle, never colour alone — a sentence, and a gauge showing where the number falls between the thresholds. Then the drawing: day by day, the recent load (solid line) against the usual load (dashes). You sweep it with your finger: touch 8 October and you get that day's 2.24.
Three tabs to go further. Why: the last 7 days' kilometres against the 21 before, the pack at a glance ("the 10 dogs that ran are at the same level: this is not specific to this dog"), and how far you can rely on the number. What next: what seven days of rest, every other day, or the same as before would give. The maths: the ratio redone before your eyes, with the day's values.
What others see, and what they don't
Every kennel member sees the same thing you do, with the pack's names: this is the kennel, not your private notebook. Nothing leaves it — no public page, no club ranking. A guest or departed dog does not appear in the pack on the drawing.
What it doesn't do
It softens nothing. The word "danger" stays: for this kennel the alert was right — 39 km in a week against 27 km over the three before. It tells you why; it does not tell you it doesn't matter.
"What next" is not advice. It is a model simulation that replays your last outing: it decides nothing and the screen says so again. It only exists if MushMate can do it honestly — outings to replay, and at least 28 days of history.
It does not guess the past. Without 28 days of really computed load there is no verdict, and the screen says "base 12 days of 28" rather than inventing a number. If your dogs were already running before MushMate, their "usual" is underestimated and the number overstated — the screen says that too.
It does not set thresholds dog by dog. They follow the format of your current objective: Mid-distance and Sprint, "caution" at 1.5 and "danger" at 1.8; Long, 1.7 and 2.0. Before, every kennel read 1.5 and 1.8.
Not everything on the phone yet. The card reads the load online — offline, it says so — and since 14 October it also shows the facts of "Why" — the longest gap without a run while the pack went out, the declared rest. Kilometres are those of training sessions: races are not counted yet.
Three choices we made
"Danger" stayed. We hesitated over "rose too fast". But a softened word that suggests a false alarm would have been worse than the right one.
The raw values are in "The maths", and only there. We had removed them in August: "2.1 out of 1000? out of 5?", nobody knew what to do with them. They come back at the end, for whoever wants to check, with the note that only the ratio matters.
Our first explanation was wrong. We first thought MushMate was counting days of history badly and raising a false alarm. The data said the opposite: counting differently would have silenced a true alert. So the screen explains the number; it does not correct it.