No Animal Should Have to Die Alone

When Alexis Fleming adopted her pit bull, Maggie, the dog had been severely neglected. Fleming, who comes from a family of dairy and sheep farmers, decided to move somewhere more rural in her native Scotland so that she could give Maggie the care and attention she needed. The dog eventually recovered from her history of abuse, and Fleming and Maggie enjoyed seven years together. Then, in 2015, Maggie experienced unexpected complications from surgery, and Fleming, who wasn’t nearby, had to make the difficult decision to end her pet’s life.


“I couldn’t be with Maggie when she died,” Fleming wrote on her website, “so I decided that, in her memory, I would build a home for other animal-folk who found themselves in need of a friend and home as their lives wind down.”


Isa Rao’s poignant short documentary Crannog follows Fleming at her sanctuary, where she provides palliative care for more than 90 terminally ill animals. Some of the dogs, sheep, chicken, pheasants, and pigs that currently live at the Maggie Fleming Animal Hospice were abandoned by their owners and left to die in a shelter. Others were discarded by farmers due to a disease or disability and would have met their end at the slaughterhouse.


“Alexis has created a tiny safe space where animals can live and die in peace while experiencing kindness—often for the first time in their lives,” Rao told me. “To her, there is no difference between human and animal suffering.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/604498/crannog/