Piper retrieves a lost disc at Richfield Park’s Goose Landing Disc Golf Course pond. Photo courtesy Jamie Pope and Peter Asciutto

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RICHFIELD — For nearly six years, New London resident and dog trainer Jamie Pope has watched in awe as his dog Piper has used her swimming abilities to rescue hundreds of discs from the Goose Landing Disc Golf Course pond at Richfield Park.

Many of the 955 discs over the years have been returned to their owners, especially the ones that had any identifying information on them.

As the 6.5-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever now approaches the milestone of 1,000 discs gathered from the murky shadows of the pond, Pope is reflecting on the incoming achievement of what his dog has accomplished.

“It’s incredible — I say, ‘You want to go get a frisbee?’ and it doesn’t matter what she’s doing. She’s going to whip around and look at me like, ‘Let’s go!’” Pope says. “Sometimes I even have to make her get out of the water.”

Pope, 66, adds that while he has trained hundreds of dogs since he was just 7 years old, none of them have been able to retrieve in a water environment the way that Piper can, most notably at the Goose Landing pond where she has found “around 90%” of her running disc total.

It all started on an October morning in 2019 when Pope saw a disc golfer accidentally toss a disc into the water.

On a whim, Pope offered to send Piper in the pond to fetch the item that had sunk out of sight.

“I sent her in there, and she came out with it. It’s been on since then.”

It’s a skill that Piper has honed and developed nearly all her life at this point. Remarkably, the dog has even managed to retrieve each disc without leaving any damaging bite marks.

“It’s crazy because she just got better and better and better as we went on,” Pope says. “The first couple times, we’d get the discs out of the water and I had to literally take them and hide them up in a tree because she was so obsessed with getting them. She couldn’t get her mind off the one she just got. But now she goes in, gets it, brings it to me, and I send her right back on the next one. She doesn’t worry anymore about the last one she got.”

With a daily record of 18 discs found, Pope estimates that Piper averages around five every time she goes out to Richfield Park. There hasn’t been a single trip where the dog hasn’t discovered at least one disc, using her ability to dive down multiple feet into the water and even dig them out from under piles of submerged mud.

Pope says that his dog’s keen nose is the key to her special talent.

“After the discs have been in the water for 24 to 48 hours, they give off some kind of smell, whether it’s that plastic or petroleum or whatever. While she doesn’t have the ability to go down real deep to get one, she always knows right off the bat whether she can get it.”

As for what happens when Piper finds a new disc — some of which have been worth up to $85 in resale value after being cleaned — Pope has worked out a system with his friend and frequent disc rescue collaborator Peter Asciutto.

“I go out there with him and he gives me all the discs, and then I call the people if they have their name on it,” Asciutto says. “If they want them back, I give them back, and if they don’t, I sell them. Then we split the money because I give him the money in snacks for the dog.”

With the weather warming up, Pope offers a reminder that he has to stay extra careful with Piper’s pond time because of the expanding algae in the water, often waiting for a rain shower before sending her back in.

Now just 45 discs away from the big 1,000-disc milestone that he estimates will happen in July or August, Pope says he’s proud of his dog and the skills he’s helped instill in her over the years.

“We’ve had her work up to 20 minutes to get them. I can bring her up here and turn her over because she knows where to go to find them.”