I’m Dr. Jamie McNally, and I believe we can do animal care work better!
Unashamedly Force-Free, with Human and Non-Human Animals Alike.
This is Extremely Human Animal Care.
Fortifyu’s Signature Dual Frameworks
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UNSHAMEDLY FORCE-FREE WITH BOTH ANIMALS AND PEOPLE
Extending Compassion to All Beings
In animal training, "force-free" refers to methods that reject coercion, punishment, fear, and pain in favor of positive reinforcement and relationship-based approaches. It's about honoring agency, building trust, and recognizing that lasting change comes from safety and connection: never control.
The Unashamedly Force-Free with Human and Non-Human Animals Alike philosophy applies the “force-free” method in new and powerful ways that can transform the way we do animal care. By applying this approach to human animals as well as non-human animals, Fortifyu is transforming how we show up to save animals and is ensuring that we don’t lose ourselves while saving them!
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EXTREMELY HUMAN ANIMAL CARE
"Extremely human animal care" is my integration of trauma-informed practice and moral injury frameworks, applied to all of animal care work. It's both a philosophy and a methodology and it centers values, ethics, and worldview in all that we do. This approach examines the motivations and values that drive people to animal care, dives deep into the human-animal bond, and focuses on living in identity-aligned and values-aligned ways that preserve our humanity and keep us deeply human in the most beautiful ways. Extremely Human Animal Care allows us to retain talent, attract new advocates, and save more animals all while feeling more joy in the process.
Bring the Extremely Human Animal Care and
Unashamedly Force-Free with Human & Non-Human Animals Alike
frameworks your organization!
My Story
The Path to Extremely Human Animal Care
For 13 years, I was a therapist specializing in trauma, PTSD, moral injury, and complex grief. I hold a PhD in Counseling Education and Supervision, I'm a Licensed Professional Counselor, Veterinary Social Work/Veterinary Mental Health Professional and I've accumulated enough certifications to fill a resume: EMDR, somatic breathwork, compassion fatigue specialization, couples and relational specializations, dialectical behavior therapy, and more. My clinical specialties and animal shelter volunteer involvement led me deep into animal-related trauma and loss, and I shifted from clinical practice to wellness coaching for animal care professionals.
On paper, I’m a clinician-turned-coach. In practice, I'm someone who refused to accept that good people and good animals should be sacrificed to broken systems..
My academic path led me to this work. My dissertation research focused on moral injury. It’s a concept born in military contexts and that is where I first researched it. I wanted to understand the specific psychological and spiritual wounds that occur when our values and our actions misalign. When we're forced by circumstance, policy, or resource scarcity to do things that violate who we are.
But my real education happened when I became immersed in censored internet content and when I became embedded on the shelter floor.
For years, I've specialized in working with content moderators (ones responsible for monitoring content of every type of animal abuse that has been uploaded to the internet from around the world) and I’ve simultaneously volunteered multiple days per week at Michigan's highest-intake animal shelter. I'm not there as a researcher or consultant. I'm there in the trenches: walking dogs, preparing enrichment, supporting new volunteers, cleaning kennels, and giving perfect animals their last walks or holding them through euthanasia.
This dual existence as a PhD researcher and frontline volunteer gave me something rare: I understand animal care work from both sides. I know the research. And I know what it feels like when your heart is breaking but you have to show up anyway because the animals need you.
And so, when I started seeing the patterns that nobody was talking about, I went to work and started studying it…
Here Is What I Found
Eighty-Four Percent of Animal Care Workers Report Exposure To Morally Violating Events in Their Work
I knew the moral distress I was seeing wasn’t just happening in isolated incidents. I knew this was endemic. And as I did what researchers do and studied the phenomenon to gain actual data, the findings confirmed what I suspected and validated my suspicions about this thing that nobody was talking about. In my independently-conducted IRB-approved research study examining moral injury in animal care settings, I found that
84% of respondents reported experiencing morally violative events in their animal care work.
Let that sink in. The vast majority of people in this field have found themselves in situations in their animal care work that betrayed their core values. Resource and convenience euthanasia. Capacity-based killing. Price-driven triage. Policies that prioritize optics over animal welfare. Management decisions that sacrifice ethics for efficiency.
But here's what else I had hypothesized that the data confirmed:
The research revealed that bullying and coercive practices within animal care organizations are a root cause of moral injury.
Not just the impossible animal care decisions. Not just the resource constraints. The way humans were treating each other in these spaces was causing profound psychological harm.
Organizations that claimed to be "force-free" with animals were using shame, intimidation, and punishment with their staff. Volunteers were being yelled at for making mistakes. Employees were being threatened and coerced. Whistleblowers were being retaliated against. People were being bullied for advocating for better conditions for the animals. And the public was attacking the very people trying to help.
While I was thrilled to have data supporting what I was thinking, the reality of this disconnect is devastating.
We were applying force-free principles to animals while using force-based approaches with humans. We were creating the very conditions that guaranteed moral injury, turnover, and compassion collapse.
That's when I knew I had to reframe everything.
This is when the “Unashamedly Force-Free with Human and Non-Human Animals Alike” and the “Extremely Human Animal Care Frameworks were born…”
Why This Matters Now
We're losing our best people.
The ones who care the most are the ones breaking first. And the standard response isn't working. Because the problem isn't individual resilience. It's systemic betrayal.
When we force good people to make impossible choices without adequate resources, support, or acknowledgment, we create moral injury. When we shame them for struggling or gossip and criticize, we compound the harm. When we replace them rather than fixing the systems that broke them, we perpetuate the cycle.
Extremely human animal care offers a different path.
It names what's actually happening (moral injury, not just "burnout"). It challenges the systems that create harm (punitive leadership, resource scarcity, bullying cultures). It provides frameworks for healing individual wounds AND transforming organizational cultures.
This isn't just about helping individuals cope. It's about building a movement toward systemic change.
Let's Build Extremely Human Animal Care, Together
Whether you're seeking personal healing or organizational transformation, the first step is a conversation.
The Human Behind the Work
I'm a trauma therapist, researcher, and organizational consultant. But I'm also:
A shelter volunteer who's held too many animals during their last moments. I know what it's like to be the last one to snuggle and walk a dog before their walk to the euthanasia room. I know what it's like to head home and cry in the car because love alone is not enough to save them.
Someone who's been attacked for refusing to join cancel culture. I've lost relationships, opportunities, and professional standing for holding to my force-free values even when it was unpopular. I've been called green, naive, sing-songy, and other names for refusing to dehumanize people I disagree with.
A person who believes in second chances…and third, and fourth. Because I've needed them myself. Because I know that people are complex. Because I refuse to reduce anyone to their worst moment. (I’ve had my in this work, too!)
An advocate for the hard path. It would be easier to join the pile-ons, to shame people publicly, to use force when I'm frustrated. But I believe the only way forward is through relationship, dignity, and the radical belief that all beings deserve compassion, even when they're difficult, even when they've caused harm, even when it costs me everything.
This work is personal. It's not a business strategy or a niche market. It's a vow to my values and a refusal to participate in a world increasingly defined by force, coercion, and cruelty.
This Is the Work I Was Meant to Do
I didn't choose this path because it was easy or lucrative. I chose it because I couldn't not do it.
Every day, I see talented, compassionate people being destroyed by the work they love. I see organizations that claim to care about animals destroying the humans who serve them. I see a field in crisis, losing its best people because we're treating systemic problems as individual failings.
I also see hope. I see organizations brave enough to challenge punitive cultures. I see leaders implementing force-free principles with their staff. I see individuals healing from moral injury and rediscovering why they chose this work in the first place.
Change is possible. Not through force. Through relationship, dignity, and the radical belief that all beings, human and non-human, deserve compassion.
This is extremely human animal care. And I'm here to help you build it.
LET'S CONNECT
Ready to Start Healing or Transform Your Organization?
Dr. Jamie McNally, PhD, LPC
Trauma Specialist | Moral Injury Researcher | Force-Free Advocate
Extremely Human Animal Care