A dog's page already knew how many kilometres it had run: 250, 500, 1,000, with a medal per tier. But it never said when. A medal that was already there on your last visit goes unnoticed. And a first run in lead, a day no musher forgets, showed up nowhere.
What you see
In the Profile tab of the dog's page, below the trophies, a « Milestones » section:
- its birth;
- its first outing;
- the first time it ran in lead;
- each mileage tier (250, 500, 1,000, 2,500, 5,000, 10,000), with the day it crossed it;
- its first race, and its first podium;
- its retirement, dated when you filled in the date.
Each line opens the outing that produced it. A first that is less than 30 days old carries the « New » pill. And in the 30 days after its birthday, the section opens with its age: « 4 years old on Sep 15 ».
The page of an outing recorded by GPS says it in turn. Below its figures, a « Firsts on this outing » card shows what the outing gave its dogs: « First outing in lead — Juno », « 250 km run — Aurora, Balto, Freya ». Each name opens its dog's milestones. An outing that gave none has no card.
What others see
Nothing more than before. The milestones live on the dog's page, and an outing's card on that outing's page: only kennel members open them. They appear neither on a litter's public page, nor on a published track's page, which never shows the team, nor in the leaderboard.
What it does not do
- Notify you. No notification: the « New » pill waits for you to open the page.
- Show on the page of an outing entered by hand, imported from Strava, or of a race. Only the page of an outing recorded by GPS says what it gave.
- Show in the phone app. It is on the website.
- Count "other activities". Like the trophies' mileage, it counts training outings and races.
- Fix the race record. The race record of a dog dropped on the trail still gives it the team's place (a known defect, logged separately). The milestones do not copy it, but they do not fix it either.
Four choices made against the obvious
A dog dropped during a race does not get the team's podium. A race's place belongs to the team. The simplest move would have been to give it to every entered dog. But a dog taken off the line at kilometre 54 did not cross the finish line: "first podium" would be false for it.
An outing where the dog ran no kilometre does not count. A dog dropped at the start was entered in the outing. That does not make it its first outing, or a first run in lead.
One line per moment, not per dog. An outing's card is about dogs, and the simplest move would have been one line for each. But a team that runs together often crosses the same tier on the same day: nine « 250 km run » lines would say no more than a single one naming them all.
The dates are stored nowhere. They are recomputed from your outings every time you open the page. Storing "tier reached" would have announced, on release day, thousands of crossings several seasons old, all marked « New ». Computed this way, the dates follow exactly the kilometres shown: if you correct an outing, the milestones correct themselves with it.