On a crisp October evening near the Nome Airport, 13-year-old Usukcaq’s short legs fluttered across the tundra. She wore a bright pink coat over her sandy-colored fur to keep her warm and spottable, just in case she wandered too close to a herd of muskox looming on a bluff.
A year ago, the flat, boggy tundra of Kipnuk was all Usukcaq knew.
When ex-typhoon Halong hit last fall, hundreds of people were evacuated in the largest airlift rescue in half a century. The most vulnerable people were evacuated first, like 91-year-old Catherine Dock, who had to be hoisted from her home by a helicopter.
“She was the oldest person in Kipnuk,” Catherine Dock’s granddaughter, Brenda Hagen said.
“It's just crazy, unreal, still unbelievable in a lot of ways too. It's a lot to process.”
Usukcaq shared a home with Hagen’s uncle, Oscar Dock, and Catherine Dock. Her name means “nail” in Yup’ik. While Usukcaq was technically her uncle’s dog, she was loved by the entire family.
“Every time I went home, even though my Mom didn't want me to, I would go and get her, and sometimes sneak her to come and sleep in our house,” Hagen said.
“It broke me,” she said. “It was so hard to be like, ‘I don't know what to do.’ ”
The rescue launched a fundraiser for a charter flight and within hours thousands of dollars streamed in. Elliott called Bethel-based pilot Nate DeHaan and booked a flight to Kipnuk.
“I think we ended up with 16 or 17 that first, just that first trip alone,” Elliot recalled.
In the two weeks after the storm, Elliott said the rescue took in about 260 dogs from across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. She posted pictures to the rescue’s Facebook page in hopes of reuniting the animals with their owners. Most went unclaimed, and were sent to Anchorage to start a new life.
But not Usukcaq. While scrolling Facebook, Hagen noticed Usukcaq’s unique polka-dot paws in the dark shadows of a kennel. She claimed Usukcaq immediately.
With so much uncertainty around where the family would go, and whether Usukcaq could come, the family decided to send her to Nome to stay with Hagen. The pup hitched a ride with the Nome-Beltz High School wrestling team, which had just competed at a meet in Bethel.
Usukcaq has had to adapt to life in a foreign place. But Hagen said it’s been a smooth transition so far.
“In Kipnuk there's no cars, there's no roads, there's no stuff like here,” Hagen said. “It's been fun to see her learn how to be in a car and stick her head out the window, jump out the window.”
Catherine Dock died last December following complications from a fall she suffered while staying in temporary housing in Bethel. Hagen said her spirit lives on through Usukcaq.
“We feel like there's a piece of my Gram in our dog, and that's what my brother said,” she said. “[Usukcaq] always reminds us of her somehow.”
Hagen and Usukcaq returned to Kipnuk in August. Homes weren’t where they used to be. The tundra had been pushed and folded. Gram wasn’t there to greet her with a hug.
But when they returned to the family cabin 20 miles upriver, she said they found salmonberries growing even more abundantly than before the storm.
Usukcaq ate them right off the tundra as fast as Hagen could pick them. They were back home.
