How it works

Every race, training camp and seminar in dryland and sled dog sport in one place – over 600 events from 19 countries, with the entry deadline, course length, classes, costs and the organiser’s announcement in full. On top of that: search, a country filter, a radius from your home town, and a map. Without an account you can see everything; with an account you also get a saved list, “My races”, dogs, vaccinations, the chip list, notifications and the marketplace.

Under Account → My races you enter your competitor name, exactly as it appears in the entry lists. The Musherkalender then matches it against the entry and result lists on Race Result automatically – past placings and upcoming entries appear by themselves. The first time this takes a few seconds; after that it keeps running every night in the background.

Enter the name as it appears in the lists, usually “First name Last name”. Capitals, accents and the order do not matter.

• The organiser does not use Race Result (or has not published the lists): then add the result yourself with “Add a race”.
• The race is in the future and has no entry list yet: tap “I have entered” on the event card and it still appears under “My races”.
• Your name is abbreviated in the list (“Müller, A.”): the matching will not find it – add the race with “Add a race”.
• The race is missing from the calendar: send us the name, date and a link with the feedback button and we will add it.

Under My dogs you add each dog with its name, date of birth and sex; the chip number, vaccinations and notes (feeding, for instance) can follow at any time. Three things come out of that: every event card tells you which of your dogs may start in which class; the chip list fills itself in; and you can lend dogs out.

You do not have to type the chip number – tap the camera symbol in the dog’s card and hold the barcode from the sticker in the frame. The app reads it continuously, and as soon as the number sits there cleanly it takes it over by itself: a short buzz, done. Read bar by bar, no digit can be misread. If the passport has no barcode at all – many vets write the number in by hand – the app reads the digits in the frame after a few seconds. A number read that way is only accepted once two passes agree; still, compare it digit by digit. In the viewfinder you can also tap take a photo, or cancel, and then it is read at leisure from a photo. For that, hold the camera close so the number fills as much of the picture as possible. If the app is unsure, it shows you the photo and its suggestion side by side so you can compare.

Retired dogs stay in the list but move to the bottom and no longer count.

In the dog’s card you tap photograph the vaccination record. The camera opens with a frame – the page should fill it. If your own shadow falls on the paper, switch the light on; that is the most common reason a line is not recognised (on an iPhone the browser sadly does not offer the torch – so turn towards a window). The app reads line by line which vaccine was stuck in and suggests the diseases and the usual validity from it. If the product name on the photo is too small, or washed out by the flash, it takes that sticker again on its own and magnifies first; stickers sitting upright in the field it rotates for itself. For the first vaccination record it downloads about 13 MB of recognition once – after that it works without a connection too. Stamped dates it fills in straight away; handwritten dates you usually enter yourself, as no text recognition reads those reliably. Measured against thirteen real passport pages it recognises three out of four vaccines and almost nine out of ten stamped dates – so you do have to check every field before you enter it.

As soon as the photo has been read, the form is open in front of you: vaccine, diseases, date of vaccination, valid-until date and batch number are already filled in, with the strip from the passport above it for comparison. You change whatever is wrong and tap add vaccination – only then does it count.

The app only looks at the last two lines of the page, because only those are still current. If the second-to-last line is the same vaccine as the last, it was the previous vaccination and is dropped. If it covers something the last one is missing – leptospirosis, say – a second form opens straight after the first, for that remainder alone. You do not need a second photo for it. Everything further up the passport is left out; you do not have to go back and record your dog’s old vaccinations.

Where several stickers sit on one line – the vet mixing two vials into one syringe – that becomes one entry per preparation in the calendar as well. Three stickers, three entries. It has to be that way: “Versican Plus L4” on its own only protects against leptospirosis; only with “Versican Plus DHPPi” beside it do distemper, hepatitis and parvovirosis come with it. The forms open one after another with the date and batch already in them – exactly as you entered them in the first. Correct a misread date there and the correction holds for the whole line; you type it only once.

Some vaccines consist of two vials with the same batch number – Versican Plus, for instance, of DHPPi and L4R, with one sticker on the “other vaccinations” page and one on the rabies page. Those are two entries even though only one injection was given. When you add the second, the date of vaccination is already in the field: it comes from the first, because both belong to the same appointment.

A traffic light on the dog shows whether the six required vaccinations – rabies, distemper, hepatitis, parvovirosis, kennel cough and leptospirosis – are still valid on race day. If one runs out, you get a reminder beforehand. A combined vaccine such as Nobivac RL is split correctly: rabies three years, leptospirosis one. For such an injection the passport shows only one year – that of the longest-lasting part. So the calendar can say “rabies until 2029” and “leptospirosis until 2027” at the same time, even though the line in the passport only says 2029. That is not a mistake: under its licence leptospirosis lasts one year, rabies three.

For kennel cough the entry also says how it was given – into the nose, into the mouth, or as an injection. The passport has no field for that; the Musherkalender reads it from the preparation, since each one is only licensed for one route. Anything with “Bb” in its name goes into the nose or mouth, the rest under the skin. This matters at races that prescribe the route – above all in Scandinavia, where the injection often requires two doses three weeks apart and all vaccinations have to be finished 21 days before the stake-out opens. If nothing is shown for a vaccine you typed in by hand, the calendar does not know that preparation and does not guess.

Important: under the VDSV animal welfare rules every dog you bring to the stake-out has to be vaccinated – including those that do not run. But only what you enter is recorded and checked.

A notice board with four sections: breeding dogs, dog equipment, camping equipment and wanted. Place an advert with photos and it goes online after a brief check. There are no dog sales – with the dogs it is about breeding.

Contact runs exclusively through the messages in the app: your phone number and your address appear nowhere in the open. You see the details of an advert once you are signed in. Whatever you then agree is between the two of you – the Musherkalender is only the board, not a dealer and not an escrow service.

At the top right of every event there is a button with a star and the word save. One tap and the race lands on your saved list – you will find it under “My races”. Tap again and it comes off.

Saving is more than a bookmark: only for saved events does the Musherkalender remind you before the entry deadline, tell you when the organiser changes something, and report a cancellation. Save nothing and you get no reminder. You need a free account for it, otherwise the calendar would not know who to remind.

For that the Musherkalender has to be on your home screen. iPhone and iPad: open the site in Safari, tap the share symbol at the bottom, then “Add to Home Screen”. Android: Chrome usually asks by itself; otherwise choose “Install app” from the menu at the top right. After that the app starts full screen, with no app store involved.

Then you switch notifications on under Account → My notifications and choose what you are reminded about: entry deadlines, new races near you, changes to saved events, expiring vaccinations and certificates, and when somebody writes to you. The test notification shows you whether everything arrives. Each device is registered separately, and you can switch it off at any time.

Reminders about events and vaccinations are collected and sent once in the morning, bundled together. Messages are the exception: those arrive within minutes, so that nobody waits for an answer without knowing it is there.

Why does it have to be switched on at all? Because no browser allows notifications to be sent without consent – the permission has to come from you, on a tap. So the Musherkalender asks you once by itself; if you decline, the question stays away for four weeks, and you can do it from your account at any time.

Yes. As soon as somebody writes to you through the Musherkalender you get a notification on your phone – as a rule within five minutes. While you are writing back and forth it stays quiet: anything you have read within two minutes triggers no notification, and several messages in quick succession arrive as one.

If you have notifications switched on on no device at all, you get an email instead – so that no enquiry passes you by, for instance when somebody asks about a breeding dog or a dog loan needs arranging. If you want neither, switch it off under Account → My notifications; the message is still there in the app.

Yes. The event list stays stored on your phone and appears without a connection too, with dates, place, classes and notes. What needs a connection – entry lists, results, messages, the marketplace – loads once you have reception again. It works most reliably when the app is on your home screen.

Under My dogs → create a chip list you choose the dogs, enter the race, the class and your start number, and get a finished PDF in the familiar format – including dogs you have just borrowed. You can print the PDF, keep it, or send it straight to the organiser by WhatsApp or email.

Under My dogs → lend dogs you choose the dogs and the period and get a five-character code. You give that to the other musher, who enters it under “take dogs on”. From then on the dogs appear with them – with photo, chip number, notes, the vaccinations you entered and in their chip list – and with you they are hidden for the same period. The vaccinations travel along, because they are a condition for starting; only the owner can still change them. You can take any dog back individually at any time, and the other person can return it at any time. Both of you get a message at every step.

On every event card under “Details” there is “To my calendar”. On an iPhone the event opens straight in the Calendar app; on Android the phone asks which calendar you want. The entry holds the place, the date and a link to the announcement.

Enter your home town under Account – after that every event says how far it is, for example “approx. 295 km to Spremberg”. That is the straight line plus 25 per cent, so a rough road estimate, not a route planner. With the radius slider you hide everything that is too far for you, and under Events → Map you see the same results on the map, sorted by distance.

With the star you save an event. Saved events are found with the “saved only” filter – and before the entry deadline you get a reminder, so you do not miss the opening of entries.

As a club you create a club account under Club and enter your events yourself; after the first approval, changes go online immediately. As a musher you report mistakes or missing races with the feedback button. Anything new we check briefly before it appears.

Your account, your dogs and your races are visible only to you – apart from what you release yourself (a breeding dog, for instance). When names are matched against Race Result no account data leaves the Musherkalender; only the public entry and result lists are read. Usage is counted anonymously, without third-party cookies. Everything else is in the privacy policy.

At the bottom of every page there is Feedback. Two sentences are enough: what happened, and what did you expect? It comes straight to us. Or by email to [email protected].