Picture this: you’re standing in a beautiful winter wonderland, ready to hit the slopes and enjoy a day of adrenaline-pumping skiing. You start your descent and, a minute later, another skier goes by. Normal—except that the skier is attached at the waist by one end of bungie, while the other end is attached to an Australian Shepherd.

While you may never have a chance to share the slopes with dog-pulled skiers, they do exist, and they are called skijorers.

Skijoring, a popular sport in wintery American spots, Scandinavian countries, and select parts of Europe, involves one or more dogs who pull a cross-country skier. The skier is still free to use his arms just as he would in typical cross-country skiing, according to Lulie Williams, one of the founding members of the Anchorage Skijor Club. But unlike cross-country skiing, the skier cannot rely only on his or her skills and training, but on that of his or her pet partner.

Williams was introduced to the sport by a friend in 1985 and has been a serious enthusiast ever since. “I like the communication and rhythm you develop while skiing with the dog,” she said. And she’s not the only one. The Anchorage Skijor club has approximately 78 members, she said, which is only a portion of the people in the city who take on the canine-powered activity.

“We tend to have a provincial view and think that Alaska is the home of dog-powered sports in the U.S.,” she said. But she points out it’s popular in other American spots like Fairbanks, AK (which had a skijoring club before Anchorage), CO, the Upper Midwest, and Northeast.

But this isn’t just a low-key hobby. Skijor competitions take place around the world, and they include a world championship, which occurs every two years. Williams said the busiest time for competition is December through January, but the remainder of the year is far from a rest.

When Williams and fellow skijorers aren’t participating in the many competitions (The Anchorage Skijor Club hosts three-to-four races a year, while other clubs such as the Montana Creek Mushing Club hosts six), they’re doing some serious training. Williams, who raises her own dogs—she bought a Norwegian German Shorthair Pointer puppy and three others several years ago and bred them for a long-line of winners—makes sure to run the dogs approximately four times a week.

“We skijor when there is snow [and] sometimes mush, or if [there’s] no snow, we take hikes and they run free.” Williams keeps two of her dogs in her office with her each day, and when she’s not training them, her friends are.

That training definitely doesn’t go to waste, either. Williams says each competition may have many different distances for skijorers to endure. “Ours are usually five- or ten- kilometers, but it isn’t unusual to have up to 15K.” The classes of competition are divided by gender, and then by the number of dogs pulling a skier—one, two, or three.

But, for the skijorers and their four-legged teammates, the competition doesn’t start when they step into their skis. “It starts the day before,” Williams said. “You feed your dogs early the day before the race, as getting their elimination chores done before you race can mean where you place.”

And after filling the dogs up in preparation for “elimination”—who would’ve thought going number two could be an athletic concept?—Williams says the skijorer must ready his equipment. Early, the morning of the race, Williams feeds her dogs juice and makes them “do their eliminations,” and then heads off to the race, extra juice in hand for the dog’s post-race refueling. “You want to be at the race at least one hour before your start time, and often earlier, to walk the dog around, test your skis, and warm up.”

I have to admit, it sounds like a tougher process than my pre-competition rituals back when I was a swimmer. Perhaps it’s time to rally for skijoring to make an Olympic debut.