Lineup positions: lead, swing, team and wheel

A dog team runs in pairs along a single line, the gangline, with the sled at the back. Each pair is a row, and each row has a job. Where a dog runs is a choice you make every training, and over a season those choices are a record of what the dog can do.

The rows, front to back

Lead. The front pair sets the pace, finds the trail and takes the commands. A lead dog has to run when nothing is in front of it and keep going at a crossing when the rest of the team would rather turn home. Not every good dog is a lead dog, and most kennels have a few that can do it and one or two that always do.

Swing. The pair behind the leaders. Swing dogs help bring the team around a turn: when the leaders go left, the swing dogs follow the line of the trail rather than cutting the corner, so the rest of the team comes around cleanly. A young dog that might lead one day often runs swing first.

Team. The rows in the middle. These dogs pull. On a big team there are several team rows; on a small one there may be none. Team is where a dog can run without having to think much, which makes it the place for dogs that are learning and for dogs that simply love to pull.

Wheel. The last pair, closest to the sled. Wheel dogs feel every jerk of the sled, lift it around corners and take the weight when it starts to move. They are usually the strongest and the calmest dogs in the team, and a dog that gets nervous close to the sled does not belong there.

Kennels name their rows in their own way. Some say point for swing, some have a single lead dog instead of a pair, some run three rows and some run eight. The jobs stay the same.

Pairing dogs

A pair runs side by side for the whole training, so the pairing matters as much as the row. A few things most mushers look at:

• Pace. Two dogs that want to run the same speed. A pair where one dog pulls the other along does neither of them good.
• Temperament. A nervous dog next to a steady one. A dog that snaps at its neighbour next to a dog that does not care.
• Experience. A young dog next to an old one that knows the job, especially in lead and swing.
• Heats. A female in heat next to a male makes the run about something other than running. Most kennels keep them apart or keep her home.
• Left and right. Many dogs run better on one side of the line. Some only run on one side.

Keep track of who ran where

The lineup is the part of a training log that is easiest to skip and hardest to reconstruct. A week later nobody remembers whether Embla ran swing or team on Tuesday. Yet it is exactly the information you need when a dog is ready to try lead, when a pair stops working, or when you want to copy the lineup of the run that went well.

Nordspann keeps the lineup as part of every training: rows from lead to wheel with the names your kennel uses, a dog in each slot, and a remark per dog if you want one. You build it by tapping a dog and then the slot, copy it from an earlier run, and the app warns when a male ends up next to a female in heat and leaves out a dog that is out that day. Over a season, each dog's page shows the runs it was in.