Skeleton animation default pose definition

I had a look at the ninja mesh that comes along with ogre examples.
Its default pose is different from the default (undeformed or unmodified mesh) that I see when artists deliver their mesh to me.
These meshes have their default pose such as th e"Leonardo Da Vinci" men.
I am currently blending the animations by fading in and out their weight from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 0.
Sometimes, however, the idle animation must wait the current animation to finish (I am reviewing this in the game commands management logic).
So in these cases, during only one frame redrawing, the "Leonardo" man shows up making the transition abrupt.
Is there a way, with 3dsmax, to define the default non animated (or deformed... I don't know this terminology...) pose to be a keyframe of (say) an idle animation?

If the figure or pose mode is shown in your application, that is mostly an issue in your application's animation blending code (probably for a single scene, all the animations are disabled) the "figure mode" or the "objects pose" is displayed when no animations are enabled in your application

You can add the objects initial pose as a keyframe of your animation in max, but that depends on what animation system you are using

I am reviewing the blending logic.
I am currently using
Ogre::Skeleton->setBlendMode(Ogre::SkeletonAnimationBlendMode::ANIMBLEND_CUMULATIVE);
What about if during a frame redrawing there is only one animation active at a low weight?
Does in this case the default pose show up blended as well as all the normal animations?