Your dog list

Dogs shows every active dog in your kennel, each on its own card: photo, age, breed, team(s), and today's status — "Watch", "In heat", "Heat due", or a rest reason (a body-condition score due for a re-check, weight loss, an injury, an ongoing treatment, or a manually decided rest). On a training or mixed kennel these cards also show the season's distance and the all-time distance, the season's hours, how much of this week's plan is already done, and a load indicator.

A search box finds a dog by name. In List view, the roster filters by team (including "Solo, no team") and by age stage (Puppy / Yearling / Adult / Senior); on a training or mixed kennel, a clickable band also splits the dogs by today's state — Ready, Tired, Fresh but untrained, Resting, Not assessed yet — with an extra button showing up while any body-condition scores are overdue for a re-check. A sort completes the list (name, season or all-time distance, hours, age, weight). Three other views replace the card grid where they apply — Rig view (a read-only gallery of a chosen team's rig templates), Load view and Summary view (a scatter plot, then a table, both crossing load against the plan for the whole kennel) — the latter two reserved for a training or mixed kennel.

At the bottom of the page, two separate lists: "Loaned-out dogs" (lent to another musher or kennel, with who's holding them and the expected return date) and "Former dogs" (retired, deceased, sold, given away or rehomed, with their departure date). A former dog keeps its full history and can be reactivated at any time.

Adding, editing or removing a dog

The "Add a dog" button opens a form: name, birth date, baseline weight, sex (with a Neutered or Spayed checkbox depending on the sex chosen, and an explicit confirmation if you're correcting the recorded biological sex rather than its neuter/spay status), type (Sprint / Distance / Mixed) and size. Everything else — exact breed, coat colour, completed ultra seasons, injury or drop history, "guest dog, loaned in from another kennel" status, microchip — stays folded under "More options" and is never required to save the dog. The same form is used to edit an existing record.

Two imports replace repetitive manual entry: a kennel-roster import from a CSV/Excel file (owner only) creates several dogs at once, with a preview and duplicate detection before you confirm; a paper-carnet import (photo, PDF or CSV) reads an existing carnet — vaccinations, medications, vet visits, injuries, weigh-ins, BCS — to either create a new dog or fill in a dog already in the kennel.

Deleting a dog is only possible when it has no recorded data yet (no session, objective, care record…); otherwise use "Remove from the team" — retired, deceased, sold, given away or rehomed — which archives the dog without losing its history and is undone with "Reactivate". That control, the loan-out control, and the dog's participation level (full, training only, or light activities only) live on the dog's own Profile tab, owner only.

A dog's own record: six tabs

Opening a card leads to the dog's full record, in six tabs:

  • Profile — identity, photo, baseline weight; on a training or mixed kennel, its mileage milestones (season and all-time) also show up here, and its race record is added once it has run at least one race.
  • Health — the chronological care history (vet visits, vaccinations, medications, injuries, heat cycles for a female), with quick actions to log an injury or care record, or a physiology reading (heart rate, temperature); weight and body-condition-score (BCS) tracking with their charts; behaviour incidents; and a personal folder for free-form notes and attachments (a prescription, for instance).
  • Training — the form and acute-load curve, weekly training load, the "why this number" explanation, and the dog's list of outings, each linked to its GPS track. Absent on a pure-breeding kennel.
  • Kennel life — the diet/ration log, with a food catalogue shared across the kennel; the gear the dog wears (harness, booties per paw, coat, rest blanket, life jacket — brand, model and size); and its housing history (enclosure moves, cohabitation with other dogs).
  • Pedigree — sire and dam (linked to another Skimate dog or entered as free text), a search or a certificate scan, and the race performance of its descendants.
  • Insurance — insurer, policy number, contacts, and the contract as a PDF.

Weighing the kennel

Two ways to log a weight: "+ Weigh" on a dog's own record (Health tab), or "Weigh-in day" from Dogs to type in several dogs' weights in one pass and save them all at once. Either way, a weight more than 20% off the last weigh-in (or the baseline weight) triggers a confirmation — the ration is computed from that figure, so it's worth catching a misplaced decimal point before saving. The weight chart on the Health tab also flags a rapid loss or gain (more than 7% within three weeks or less).

Going further

  • Getting started with MushMate — create your kennel and choose its orientation (Training, Breeding, or both), which decides whether the Training tab and load figures show up on your dog records.