OAKRIDGE (AP) — An Oregon dog who loves to leap off docks is heading for a national championship to compete.

Heidi is a yellow Labrador retriever who has a personal best of 25 feet, 2 inches, good enough for the 2008 DockDogs National Championships in Richfield, Wis. The three-day competition begins Oct. 10.

Her owner, Hannah Gordon, is a 14-year-old freshman at Oakridge High School who had planned on training Heidi as a hunting dog.

But when Hannah told her P.E. teacher at Oakridge Junior High, John Warren, that Heidi could leap a 5-foot fence at home, Warren suggested Hannah look into DockDogs.

Since she started jumping as a 1-year-old in 2006, Heidi has won about a dozen first-place ribbons and trophies in DockDogs competitions, Hannah said.

Heidi’s first big wins came at the Lane County Fair in 2006 when she won both the high jump and long jump, said Hannah’s father, David Gordon, a fifth-grade teacher at Oakridge Elementary School.

Now Heidi and Hannah are ranked first nationally in the DockDogs “youth” handlers category for handlers ages 15 and under.

Heidi averages 24 feet and 1 inch in DockDog’s “Big Air” competitions — the long jump event for dogs.

What’s the secret? Hannah hasn’t figured it out. “She just does it,” Hannah said. “She likes it.”

Hannah saved money for three years to buy Heidi, a purebred, from a breeder in Astoria for $350 in 2005.

Her father is proud of them both.

“What I think is neat is she’s been able to do a lot with her dog, and she’s learned a lot about life,” David Gordon said. “She’s been very responsible.”

DockDogs is a national organization that began in 2000 and hosts events all over the country in which dogs compete in three events. Big Air, Extreme Vertical (high jump) and Speed Retrieve, where dogs swim after a duck decoy that’s been thrown into the water and return it as fast as they can.