SOUTH FORSYTH — Karen O’Brien saved her dog, Gunter, without even knowing he existed. The midtown Atlanta resident saw on a Facebook post that some dogs in Clayton were going to be euthanized, so she signed up to adopt the first one on the list. She knew nothing about what dog she would get. Just as long as it’s good with other dogs, she thought. O’Brien had to wait about two weeks before getting an appointment to spay the new pet. At the vet’s office, she was told the dog was pregnant with five puppies. She was due any day. So she called her friend’s daughter, Fiona Tinley.“She took it upon herself, at 10 years old, to get on YouTube and Google and learn about how to birth puppies,” O’Brien said. All of the pups were adopted out, except Gunter. Two years later, the Piney Grove Middle School student and Gunter won the title of 2014 Big Air Novice World Champion last month at the DockDogs World Championship in Iowa. The championship awards winners in three water sports from a pool of about 400 dogs — retrieval, high jump and distance jump. Fiona and Gunter won for the distance jump, but they didn’t even know whether he would finish until the end. O’Brien said the average range of the 38,000 competition dock dogs is to jump between 1 inch and 9-feet-11-inches. Gunter jumped 14 feet in his first qualifying heat, placing him as the top qualifier and exempting him from the second day of semifinals. In the finals, each dog was given two jumps. Gunter got on the dock for his first round, but he wouldn’t budge.“We told [Fiona], because she started getting upset and nervous, if you have fun, he’ll feel that and he’ll have fun too, and go,” O’Brien said.“So his turn came up again. And he jumped and went 12 feet. And won. I never thought I would cry over anything like that.” Fiona started jumping dogs in 2011 when she would train with O’Brien’s other dog, a golden retriever named Joey. Gunter wouldn’t even get in the water at the beginning of his training.“He saw Joey go in, and all bets were off,” O’Brien said. Fiona’s mother, Kelly Tinley, said her daughter, now 12, is a horseback rider and “has always been very good around animals.”“[Dockdogs] gives her responsibility, learning from the championship in particular that if something bad happens you can come back and win,” Tinley said.“It teaches that preservation factor. It’s a great example for a kid to have in their childhood.”