MushMate records your track even with the screen off or while you switch apps — that's what lets it capture a multi-hour outing in full, phone in a pocket or under a glove. With "While Using the App" only, the system stops recording the moment the screen turns off: the outing cuts out partway through.
On Android, the dialog offering to switch to "Always Allow" only appears once per install — if you dismissed it by mistake, you'll need to turn it on by hand in the app's location settings.
At the start of an outing, recording always begins immediately, from the very first second: the app forces tracking on without waiting to confirm movement, regardless of the "Physical activity" (Android) or "Motion & Fitness" (iOS) permission.
An ordinary pause — the app simply detecting that the team has stopped — never puts the GPS to sleep: the receiver keeps recording positions without interruption, and the pause ends by itself the moment you set off again, no button required. Only a declared rest stop (étape) puts the GPS to sleep to save battery — and it does not wake itself back up, even once the team is moving again. Ending the étape is what restarts recording — the button is called "Resume" on the resume prompt and the long-distance course screen, or "End of stage" on the training screen — and that action takes effect immediately, independent of that permission. If a resume seems missing or delayed after a declared rest stop, check first that you actually ended the étape before setting off.
On Android, your phone can stop background GPS recording to save battery — the exemption lets a multi-day race keep recording with the screen off. Manage › Account and device › "Android may kill the recording" shows this exemption's status and a button to grant it.
Some manufacturers (notably Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei) run their own battery manager on top of Android's, which can still cut tracking even once the exemption is granted — that's the phone's behaviour, not the app's, and the only known fix is to also whitelist MushMate in that manufacturer's own tool, usually under the phone's battery settings.
Android requires a background location service to show a persistent notification, so you always know an app is recording your position — this notification cannot be hidden, for any app. It goes away as soon as recording ends.
A small indicator stays visible while recording:
A "± X m" figure next to the indicator shows the current position accuracy.
"GPS imprecise" means fixes are still arriving, but less accurate than the usual threshold — under dense tree cover or between steep terrain, that's normal and temporary. "GPS lost" means no fix has arrived for over 90 seconds: check that location is still enabled on the phone and that the app still has permission to use your position (App settings, reachable from the recording screen if an error message is shown).
The system is set to only give a position rounded to one or two kilometres — no track can be recorded in that state. Open the app's location settings and turn on "Precise location" (exact wording varies by phone).
No usable position was captured during the whole outing — often a location permission turned off, or the system's GPS disabled the entire time. The session can't be recovered: the fix is to check location settings before your next outing.
This choice changes nothing about GPS accuracy or behaviour: it says where the phone will be while recording — tucked away against you or on a mount —, and so what the screen costs in battery and whether the map stays on screen.
In Handlebar mode the screen stays on while recording; it sleeps again during a stage and at stop. There is no separate "Keep screen on" option any more: that is what Handlebar does. In Pocket mode the screen goes dark after the phone's usual delay.
The app suggests the mode from the activity: Handlebar for bike, scooter, kart and quad when training, and for sled and wheels in a sprint race (a single leg); Pocket everywhere else, and for every long race — battery first. It then remembers your last choice for each activity, separately for training and racing.
The figures themselves are the same in Pocket and Handlebar: they follow the activity. Bike, scooter, kart and quad show speed as the big figure; canicross and cani-hiking, time and pace in min/km; sled, kicksled, skijoring and pulka, time, with speed as a small figure in a race. Before you leave, "Your figures" (the "How will you run it?" step) shows the run screen with sample values: tap a box, then the figure you want, or a preset ("Default", "Speed first", "Timer first", "On foot"). During the outing, press and hold a figure: the "This figure shows" sheet offers the others as tiles, with their current value. Your choice is remembered for that activity, separately for training and racing. The same sheet switches between Pocket and Handlebar on the way — for a night section, for example.
In Pocket mode the map only shows on request ("Show map · 60 s") and closes by itself one minute after it opened or after your last touch on it, so the screen doesn't keep drawing a map nobody is looking at. In Handlebar mode the map stays on screen below the counters.
On either one, “Full screen” opens the map large so you can scroll it; it goes back to your figures by itself after 30 seconds without a touch, and STOP isn't there, so a sliding finger never ends the outing.
A pause is only recognised when the team hasn't moved 10 metres within a given window, rather than from speed alone — a stationary GPS receiver can report a residual speed above 2 km/h, indistinguishable from genuinely moving at a walking pace. The full story is in the blog post "A stop isn't measured in km/h, it's measured in metres".
Yes. A retired dog no longer works, but still lives at the kennel: it is offered in "Unassigned" and in "Move a dog" on the Enclosures page, and retiring it ("Remove from the team") no longer takes it out of its pen.
It shows separately under "Former dogs" on the Dogs page, with its history, and can be reactivated at any time. Step by step: Adding your dogs.
Yes, without erasing anything. Declare it deceased ("Remove from the team"): on the site as on the phone, it no longer has a row in Dogs. It becomes a star in "Those who ran with us", and only a nameless line leads there, at the bottom of Dogs. To make it disappear, turn off "A line at the bottom of Dogs" (site: Settings › My kennel; phone: Manage › Kennel › Deceased dogs). Its logbook, outings and statistics are kept, and the sky stays open from that same setting.
It is a personal setting for what you see at home: it changes nothing for your teammates. If a deceased dog is still shown, first check that its status is "Deceased". Details: Settings and subscription.
Yes: set them to "Light activities" (on the web, the Profile tab of their record; on the phone, the "Edit" screen). The dog is then no longer offered for sessions, races, objectives or rigs, and leaves the form counters of your dogs: "to check" on the dashboard, "Not assessed yet" in the Dogs list, "Effort rated" in the statistics, "Did not run in the period" in "Positions on the line".
Its care, weighings, chores and pen do not change; its past outings keep their kilometres in the history. Details: Your dogs.
Yes. In a dog's ration (its record, "Kennel life"), "+ Create a food" asks for the brand, the product, the type (kibble or raw / BARF), the kcal/kg, the protein % and the fat %. The food joins the kennel's catalogue and can then be chosen for all your dogs.
If the bag doesn't give the kcal/kg, "Estimate from the label" computes it from the analytical constituents (protein, fat, fibre, ash, moisture), with the NRC 2006 equation; the estimate stays "unverified" until you enter the manufacturer's value. An optional "Mineral composition" section takes calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium and magnesium (g/kg; a typed % is converted): the Ration card turns it into its mineral balance. The form does not carry an ingredient list, and doesn't fill the minerals by itself. A "Share with the community" box offers the food to other kennels, after validation.
Yes. In an objective's "My conditions" step ("My season" on an objective's sheet), the optional "Maximum distance per outing" block offers a limit on dirt, a limit on snow, and long-outing days with their own limits. Example: 10 km on dirt from Monday to Thursday, 25 km on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The plan then puts your long outings on those days, shortens each outing to its limit and shows what the week lost ("−12 km: 2 outings shortened to your limit"). The same block exists in the phone's objective forms; what a week lost, though, is for now only shown on the web.
Step by step: Creating a season and a goal.
No: it is a ceiling, not a target. It says how far the session may go without leaving what the plan judges reasonable for your dogs. Go slower if that is the team's comfortable pace: being below the ceiling is never a fault.
In Sprint, the ceiling rises at peak: up to 33.6 km/h on the sled for speed sessions, 30.2 km/h for race pace. It stays a ceiling: MushMate gives you no speed to hold.
These figures are reference values. If your dogs go differently, state their speeds in Plan › Model settings, "Team speeds" card, by discipline and format, or on an objective, in its advanced settings ("Advanced options" on the phone). The plan takes them as they are at the next regeneration.
In the "Edit session" window, this setting is called the maximum pace. Step by step: Creating a season and a goal.
No: a stage race is one objective, not a series of milestones. In "Add an objective", pick the nature "Race": a dedicated block offers to attach a race from the catalogue or create a private one and, for a stage race, "Several days" opens its programme: one line per stage, with its distance and the rest before it. The objective's distance becomes the sum of the stages.
A milestone is a preparatory race or raid placed on the way to the objective: it is not for entering the days of the race itself. A staged milestone keeps "N days × distance" for now: a number of days, a distance per day and one rest, without a stage-by-stage programme. Step by step: Creating a season and a goal.
A regeneration rebuilds the plan from the objective's settings — and that is where your days are set. The days you never go out ("My conditions") get no session at every regeneration: set them in the objective rather than moving sessions by hand.
A hand edit on a week only lasts until the next regeneration, unless the owner switches the plan to "In my hands": it is then never rewritten without you. Each regeneration sets the old plan aside (the last three versions are kept, with "Put back in service"). Step by step: Adapting your plan.
This is intended. As soon as a week of the plan has been run, "Adjust the season" (phone: "Edit season") changes the season's date, not the day the weeks start, and regenerating doesn't change it either: the plan does not rewrite what you have already run.
To choose the day: "Shift the weeks" — on the website, in the Season view next to "Adjust the season" or on an objective's Plan tab; on the phone, the objective's "⋯". Pick the day, Monday for instance, then confirm: the season's plans are regenerated on that day.
The change does not show right away: it comes on the next chosen day. Until then, a short transition with no planned session ("Transition: run as you like, the plan resumes on …"). Your outings don't move, and past weeks stay in "Previous plan versions".
An "In my hands" plan is not shifted, and if a milestone or the race falls during the transition, the shift is refused: shift after it. Details: The training plan.
Link Strava, or import the run's file. With Strava: Settings › Integrations › the orange "Connect with Strava" button, then "Review and import activities". A session imported from Strava is visible to you alone (that is Strava's rule). With a file: export the run as GPX from strava.com and import it into MushMate — it is then visible to the kennel.
Next time, MushMate also records a run directly on the phone. Step by step: Importing your runs and Recording a run.
As a CSV, which your spreadsheet opens. On an objective's plan, the "Export" menu downloads the plan as CSV — by week, by session, with its parameters or its diagnostics — and opens a printable calendar, to save as PDF from your browser. On the phone, Objective › "⋯" › "Export the plan (CSV)" hands the same four files to the share sheet (the parameters need a connection); the printable calendar stays on the website.
It is not an Excel file (.xlsx): a CSV opens in Excel, but without formatting. Details: The training plan.
Your kennel's name, your region and your cumulative kilometres (outings and races), and how many club outings your kennel took part in — a run attached to a club outing, at the start or in the review; never a time or a dog. That's all: never your dogs, your plans or your logbooks, and never the pace of a shared trail. Participations are read between members only: the club's public page shows none of it.
The club's public page adds what you already made public under your name (published outings, shared moments) — which is what the form says before you join, because joining counts as consent. Your times only leave if you turn on "Show my times to the club", for that club only.
To leave: in Organization › Club › Members, "Leave the club", then confirm: "Your kennel disappears from its leaderboard; your outings stay yours." Your kennel also takes its trails out of the club, and the "Show my times to the club" agreement is erased.
To remove another kennel: only the founding kennel can, with "Remove" on its row. Removing it also revokes all active invitation codes — you will have to generate a new one. The founding kennel itself has no button to remove itself from this screen.
If they are not in the club, they only read "Group outing", the club's name, the day and the number of kennels coming — never the title, time, place, details or the names of the kennels that answer. The link can therefore be forwarded without revealing anything.
If they are a club member and signed in, they land on the outing itself and can answer it. The link doesn't make anyone enter the club: for that, you need the founder's invitation link.
Not by default: the club's public page "is visible to anyone with the link, not indexed by search engines". The owner of the founding kennel can make it "Visible in search engines" ("The club's public page" card, under the leaderboard); the member kennels' names and their kilometres then become findable, and the page follows within a few minutes.
The pages of published outings, moments and invitation links are never indexed. A kennel that doesn't want its name to be findable can leave the club.
An invitation code or link is valid for 14 days. Depending on the case, you read "This code does not match any invitation." (copied wrong), "This code has expired — ask the founder for a new one." or, for a link, "This link is no longer valid" (expired, withdrawn, or incomplete).
In every case, ask the founding kennel for a new link: "Generate an invitation code" in Organization › Club › Members. If the founder has removed a member since, all active codes were revoked with it: a new one is needed.
Yes. With a single entry, a club or an event, the Club screen opens it straight away; otherwise (several entries), it sorts them into “Your clubs” and “Your events”: one tap opens the club or the event. From a club or an event, the “Your clubs and events” link at the top of the page takes you back. On the phone, it is Manage › Club, with “Your clubs” and “Your events”.
On the website, the "Join with a code" form only shows for a kennel with no entry at all, neither a club nor an event: to join one more club, use its founder's invitation link, which opens in the browser — or, on a phone where the app is installed and up to date, in the app, on “Join a club”, with the code already filled in. A kennel enrolled only in events sees neither "Join with a code" nor "Found a club": it does not have to belong to a club, and an invitation link opens one for it if it wants. On the phone, when your kennel has a club and the screen sorts several entries, "Join a club", at the bottom, leads to the same form. Each club keeps its own shared trails and its own "Show my times to the club" agreement.
Because the “Public litters” switch is off, in Settings: it allows litters to be published for the whole kennel, and it is off by default. The message says it: “Couldn't publish — check that public litters are enabled in Settings.”
Turn “Public litters” on (reserved to the kennel's owner), go back to the litter and click “Publish”: each litter still has to be published explicitly, the switch publishes nothing by itself.
A handover link is valid for 30 days and works once. It stops opening if it has expired, if you withdrew it (“Withdraw the link”) or if it has already been used: the buyer then reads “This handover link is no longer valid”, with no name.
Look at the puppy's row. If it offers “Hand over the logbook” again (link expired or withdrawn), click “Create the link”: a new link, valid for 30 days. If it shows “Handover link valid until …”, the link is still valid: send it again with “Share the link”. If it shows “Logbook handed over on … to …”, the link has already been used: the puppy is already handed over, there is nothing to redo.
No: it's a copy. The buyer receives in their MushMate the puppy's identity and parents, its vaccines, dewormings and visits, its weights and its first photo; you keep your logbook intact.
Never leaving: your notes, the price, the deposit, the buyer's contact and the requests received. On your side, you then only read “Logbook handed over on … to {kennel}”: the date and the kennel's name, nothing else of its life there.
No. Handing over the logbook doesn't change the puppy's status: it stays “Alive” on the litter. Its departure is noted separately, with “Departure”: the date, the reason (Sold, Given or Other), the recipient and the price.
The two gestures are independent: you can hand over the logbook before or after the exit, and an alive or already-departed puppy can receive a link. A dead puppy, or one kept in the kennel, can't leave with its logbook.
Because MushMate verifies no studbook. The number (LOF, AKC, RKF…) you enter in the dog's Pedigree section, on the website or on the phone, is shown as is, with this chip, so that the buyer knows what it is: a breeder's declaration, not a certification.
The “See the pedigree” link and a parent's photo only show for a parent of your kennel; a sire from another kennel, or outside MushMate, only has a name.
Because the due date is calculated, not typed: it is the ovulation date + 63 days if you entered it (from progesterone tests), otherwise the mating date + 63 days.
To change it, correct the date it depends on: “Edit dates” (owner) opens the mating, the optional ovulation and the whelping, and shows the recalculated due date. MushMate also shows the gap in days before saving, and offers to carry the shift over to the birth date of puppies already added to the kennel.
Because puppies' photos are added from the mobile app: the gallery of the puppy's sheet, taken or picked, then compressed before upload. The website shows them (on the puppy's row and on the litter's public page) but doesn't offer a button to add one yet.
It isn't something you missed: it is a limit today. Add the photo from the phone, it then appears everywhere — and a puppy's first photo becomes the dog's portrait when its logbook is handed over to its buyer.
There is no field for the code in the iPhone app, and it isn't "not yet": App Store rule 3.1.1 forbids an app from unlocking access with its own code.
On iPhone, the musher opens your address (mushmate.eu/code/SNOWDAY) in the phone's browser, creates an account or signs in, and clicks "Activate".
The app then re-reads the access at its next launch: the musher closes it completely and reopens it.
On Android the "I have a code" field exists, at launch and in Manage › Account and device › "Partner code". So always hand out your address, not just the word: it is the one that works everywhere.
No: the code is meant for new mushers, and you are paying for them, not for handing months to someone who already pays. The musher then sees "This code is reserved for new mushers: your subscription is already active", and nothing is counted on your page.
Two neighbouring cases, refused too: a kennel whose trial has ended (now read-only) reads "This code is for new mushers: you have already tried MushMate" — except with a code handed out before 26 October 2026, which still accepts it; a kennel with permanent access is told it can keep the code for a friend.
Each code has an activation cap (50 by default) and an activation deadline, which you choose with the MushMate team. Your private page shows both: "13 activations out of 50 · 37 places left" and "Can be activated until …". When the cap is reached, the musher reads "All the places offered by this partner have been taken"; after the deadline, "This code has expired".
These two limits are what protect you if your word travels further than planned: you never pay for more than the cap. Need more places or a later date? Ask the MushMate team.
No, never: your private page only carries numbers — activations in total, by month, places left. No musher name, no kennel name, no e-mail, no region, no precise date: the page doesn't contain them, and the database doesn't return them to your link. The musher knows it before signing up: your code's page says so.
You can still get to know a musher who chooses to tell you themselves. The app doesn't do it for them.
Write to the MushMate team: they regenerate your link, and the old one stops working at once (it answers "page not found"). The link has no password: anyone who has it sees your figures — numbers, never a name, but numbers all the same. Your codes don't change and keep working.
To avoid it, don't share this link (it isn't made for a newsletter); what you share is the address of the code (mushmate.eu/code/SNOWDAY).
Your figures link does not change your item catalogue: the catalogue has its own link (mushmate.eu/partenaire/catalogue/…). If that one has been shared, write too: the team replaces it, and the old one stops working.
Nothing abrupt: the kennel goes back to MushMate's usual rule, exactly as at the end of a trial. It subscribes, or it becomes read-only — its data stays readable and exportable, but it can no longer write. Nothing renews by itself: the code asks for no credit card.
The musher is warned: thirty days before the end, the pill at the top of the screen reads "Comped · D-N", and in the last fourteen days your signature becomes "N days left, offered by …". That line is the reminder — with no notification and no alert banner.
A partner doesn't create their own code: the MushMate team opens it with you. Write to them at the contact address shown at the bottom of every page of the site, saying who you are (brand, race organiser, club, coach) and what you want to offer: a duration (3 or 6 months usually), a number of places and a deadline.
You get back the word, the address to share, a ready-to-paste text in French and English, and your private page. For the "Offered by …" signature, also send your logo, a sentence of yours (120 characters at most) and your website's address.
Your coach reads your dogs' names, your active plan and its notes, your sessions from the last 8 weeks (Strava excluded) and the health record, read-only. For your kennel's Analysis (energy balance, who carries the team, race-day form) they also read, without being able to change anything, your dogs' rations and weigh-ins, your goals and races, and the state of an ongoing litter (the number of live puppies, never their records). They can write instructions into the plan's sessions, notes for you, and add a dog's weight on a session day.
They never see your Strava-imported sessions, your e-mail, your other kennels or your payment details. The invitation page says so before you accept, and access closes by itself on the end date.
In Experts › My experts, click “Remove access” on your coach's line, then confirm. Only the kennel owner sees this button.
Your coach can also end the accompaniment on their side: the line then reads “Ended on …” and the coupon they gave you, if any, ends with it.
Either way, your coach reads nothing more from your kennel. Instructions already written stay in your plan, and their resources stay readable for 30 days.
Because a hand-written instruction must not be erased by a regeneration: as soon as your coach saves one, the plan is marked “by hand”, and you are warned before regenerating it.
You can switch back to “Adjusted by MushMate” in one click: it changes nothing in the plan, which stays as it is until you regenerate it. MushMate does not rebalance the kilometres of a plan held by hand.
With a second objective in the same season. The season tours do not generate a plan: they tell you each morning which dogs can go. For the preparation, add a "Maintenance" objective on kart (or quad) in the same season: it generates without snow, so entirely on dryland. Or an "In my hands" objective, if you set your outings yourself.
The season tours never take a dog away from that objective: its plan prescribes as usual, and your completed rounds count in each dog's load. Details: The touring operator guide.