Breeding

Your litters

Breeding lists your kennel's litters, split into "Active" and "Archived". Each card shows the litter's name (or, failing that, the dam's), the dam and sire, its status, a countdown to the due date — or how overdue it is, past that date — while it's pregnant, its whelping date once that's recorded, how many puppies are still alive, and an alert whenever a signal calls for one (fever, whelping imminent, losing weight, slow growth). The "New litter" button opens the declaration form. On a breeding or mixed kennel, the gist of this page also shows up at a glance on the Dashboard, in the Breeding card (heats under way or coming up, next whelping, unhandled buyer inquiries).

Declaring a litter

Only the dam is required — a female dog from your kennel. The sire is optional: a male from the kennel, or a name typed in free text for an outside mating; if both are filled in, the kennel dog is the one shown everywhere as the sire. Litter name and mating date stay optional; entering the mating date automatically computes the due date (mating + 63 days), shown read-only on the litter's page. The same declaration exists on mobile (Kennel › Litters › New litter), with the same fields.

A litter can also start from Enclosures: moving an intact male there into a "heat" enclosure that already holds a female in heat offers to confirm a deliberate mating, which immediately records a provisional litter (whelping in about 63 days) — to correct or cancel afterwards from Breeding like any other.

A litter's life cycle

A litter moves through statuses — typically Mated → Pregnancy confirmed → Whelped → Weaning → Closed — but Pregnancy confirmed isn't a required stop: from Mated, you can also record whelping directly. At any point before whelping, it can also be marked Lost. Each step is recorded with its own button ("Confirm (ultrasound)", "Record whelping", "Start weaning", "Close"…), which stamps today's date on the matching field; a confirmation done by mistake is undone with "Cancel confirmation", which clears the confirmation date without touching the mating date. Once every puppy has left — promoted, departed or died — a reminder suggests closing the litter.

The owner can also correct the mating or whelping date afterwards ("Edit dates"). Since that changes every puppy's age — and, for a puppy already added to the kennel, the matching dog's birth date too — MushMate shows the shift in days before you confirm and offers to carry it over to those birth dates rather than doing it silently; care reminders already set to a specific date are never shifted automatically and are left for you to check by hand. The due date itself can't be edited directly: it is recomputed from the mating date.

A litter with no puppies at all can be permanently deleted by the owner ("Delete litter") — useful for a litter created by mistake. As soon as a puppy is recorded on it, deletion is no longer offered, so as not to take its weighings and care records down with it.

Watching the dam before and after whelping

While the litter is active, a Temperature block keeps the full history of readings taken on the dam (date, time, value in °C) and charts them. A drop below 37.5 °C before whelping signals imminent birth, about 24 hours out; a rise above 39.5 °C within 7 days of whelping signals a fever — possible infection, see the vet. On mobile, the Kennel's "Litters" space offers the same log, in both phases.

The puppies

Once whelping is recorded (and until weaning), "Add puppy" captures its name, sex, collar colour, birth order, coat, birth time and birth weight — none of it required. Each record stays editable afterwards ("Edit puppy"), whatever its status, to fix a typo even on a puppy that has died or already left.

Weight is tracked puppy by puppy: "+ Weigh" logs a weighing (grams, date, optional length in centimetres) and feeds its chart. A loss from one day to the next shows "Losing weight"; a gain under 10 g per day shows "Slow growth" — a newborn puppy should gain about 10 g per day at minimum; both signals need at least two weighings on different days to be computed. The photos that show up next to each puppy are added from the mobile app (the puppy record's photo gallery, shot or picked and then compressed before upload); the web displays them but doesn't yet offer a button to add one.

Care — deworming, a vaccine, microchipping, a vet check, or a plain note — is logged one puppy at a time ("+ Care") or in one pass for the whole living litter ("+ Care (whole litter)" — handy for a deworming round given to every puppy the same day). Each entry carries a date and, optionally, a next reminder: while it's due, a pill shows "due" (within 7 days) or "overdue"; clearing the reminder date once the care is done turns it off. A puppy's full history — birth, weighings, care, death — unfolds under "History".

When a puppy leaves the litter

A living puppy can follow four paths, each offered from its row in the table:

• Add to kennel creates its full record in Dogs: a breed type to choose, a baseline weight pre-filled from its last weighing (1 kg by default), sex to confirm if it was never recorded. The promoted puppy stays visible on the litter with a "→ logbook" link, and its race record is added to it once it has run at least one race.
• Price / reserve (owner only) notes a selling price and/or a reservation — buyer name, contact, deposit — without taking the puppy off the litter: it stays "Alive" until it actually departs.
• Departure (owner only) records it leaving — date, reason (Sold, Given, Other), recipient (carried over automatically from a standing reservation) and price — and sets its status to "Departed".
• Mark died records a date and, optionally, a cause; the puppy's record stays editable afterwards.

Publishing a litter and answering inquiries

Publishing a litter needs two settings: the "Public litters" switch, in Settings, turns the feature on for the whole kennel (off by default); then, on the litter itself, "Publish" (owner only — on mobile, a handler can also publish) turns on that litter's own public page. The result is a link you share yourself ("Copy public link") — not a public directory listing every kennel's litters.

The public page, reachable without an account, shows the litter's name, the dam and sire (with a "self-declared, unverified" tag next to any registry number) and their race record if they have one, then every puppy still available — photo, name, sex, coat, birth date, price if one is set; an unavailable puppy shows only that. One button exports the puppy list as CSV, another prints the page to PDF. At the bottom, a form (name, email, message) lets any visitor send you an inquiry.

Every inquiry sent lands in "Inquiries", on the litter's own page: newest first, each with a status you move forward with a click (New → Replied → Reserved → Completed, or Closed), a "Reply" button that opens your mail app, an optional puppy to link it to, and an internal note. Once an inquiry is linked to a puppy that's reserved or already sold, a "Handover pack" link opens its handover document: the puppy's identity, the buyer's-country paperwork (eight researched countries — including France, Switzerland and Belgium — plus a generic template for anywhere else; check with your own registry, this isn't legal advice), its recorded health record, its upcoming vaccination or deworming reminders, and the standard directives to hand the buyer (food, vet follow-up, socialising, growth, staying in touch).

On mobile, the Kennel's "Litters" space also has the temperature log, the puppies and the publish switch, and inquiries can be viewed and replied to by email there; the full detail — internal notes, a linked puppy, the handover pack — stays on the web.

Going further

• Your dogs — where a puppy lands once added to the kennel, with its own weight tracking.