160. Lili Chin 

[0:00]  Colleen Pelar

Colleen, welcome to Unleashed at Work and Home. I'm Colleen Pelar, and this is where pet professionals come for honest conversations about what it really takes to show up for yourself while serving the animals you love. If you've ever felt caught between compassion and exhaustion, you're in the right place. Here we explore what it means to reconnect with your inner wisdom and rediscover the joy that brought you to this work. Make sure to join my email community at ColleenPelar.com for gentle, practical insights designed specifically for pet professionals. Now let's dive in. Welcome back to Unleashed at Work and Home. My guest today is Lili Chin, and if you don't know her name, you probably know her art. She has so many wonderful resources—dog body language, cat body language, and other animals as well. Welcome, Lili, I'm so glad you're here.

[1:01]  Lili Chin

Hi, Colleen, thank you so much for having me.

[1:06]  Colleen Pelar

I will admit I have sort of a personal delight in having you here. I started cartooning about four years ago, and it is a late-in-life passion that's been challenging for me. I see your art with such simple lines and such beauty, and I'm blown away that not only do you have cute images, but that you are able to communicate really specific body language things in very simple lines. It's deceptively simple what you do. Thank you for doing all of that.

[1:40]  Lili Chin

Of course. So I've been drawing since I was very little, as far back as I can remember, and I have a background in traditional animation, which is a career that is drawing-based. So I did a lot of drawing. I learned from a lot of animators and very proficient artists. So I've had a lot of practice to get to a stage where I can do my best to communicate as much as I can with as few lines as possible.

[2:18]  Colleen Pelar

It's really extraordinary how few lines you use and how much you convey. A question I love to ask all of my guests is: when you were 10, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

[2:34]  Lili Chin

Such an interesting question. So when I was 10, I was in Malaysia, in primary school, and every year we had a form that all the students had to fill out—what do you want to be when you grow up—and you were meant to list three things. I had archaeologist, private investigator, and art teacher, because I didn't know how to incorporate drawing into a profession, so I just thought, okay, art teacher.

[3:09]  Colleen Pelar

That's kind of cool. Those are very different—private investigator and art teacher.

[3:15]  Lili Chin

Maybe because I was reading a lot of mystery books with kid characters solving crimes, and I thought that's what I want to do.

[3:28]  Colleen Pelar

So cool. So how did things go from there? You got through regular school, and then what happened?

[3:36]  Lili Chin

I got through regular school and went to art college—the College of Fine Arts in Sydney—and I was going to get an art degree, but I was actually a quite unsettled, scattered teenager, and I didn't finish my degree. Instead I did several odd jobs, and then I decided I really wanted to learn how to animate. I wanted to get into animation because I've always loved seeing drawings move and come alive on the screen. In Sydney at the time—this is like the '90s—there were no courses, no tertiary education for animation. So I became an intern in an animation company and worked for free for several months just to get into the industry, to learn to do it. I worked in the animation industry for several years before any of this happened, before dogs or cats or any of this.

[4:45]  Colleen Pelar

And where do you live now?

[4:47]  Lili Chin

I now live in LA, so on the West Coast.

[4:50]  Colleen Pelar

Malaysia, to Sydney, to LA—any other places in between?

[4:57]  Lili Chin

That's it. What took me from Malaysia to Sydney was that my mom passed away when I was little, so it's just my dad, and he wanted me to get a better education. He sent me to boarding school in Sydney when I was 12. I was there for six years, and then I decided I wanted to stay in Sydney because I had friends and things I wanted to do. And how I came to LA was through animation—I had a little animation studio with a partner, and we worked on commercials and TV series. We came up with an idea for a show, and Warner Brothers Animation optioned it and turned it into an actual TV series. So we moved to LA to work on it, and I stayed. I didn't go back. I liked it here. I became a citizen in 2019.

[6:06]  Colleen Pelar

How long ago was that?

[6:11]  Lili Chin

That was in the early 2000s.

[6:17]  Colleen Pelar

How did you go from your animation studio to what I would consider a pet professional—how did you become the person people think of for animal body language?

[6:31]  Lili Chin

So there's the clichéd story. It was because of a dog. My animation work was drying up and becoming less stable, and I had just adopted a Boston Terrier called Boogie. Before that, I was fostering Boston Terriers for Boston Buddies Rescue, doing illustrations of dogs as a fundraiser. Because I was fostering for them, they said when you're ready to adopt, you could take your pick of their dogs. I chose Boogie because I just liked the way he looked, and it said he had no issues. But he bit my building manager. I was in a rental apartment and was issued an eviction notice—either get rid of the dog or move out. I didn't want to do either, so I pleaded with my landlord, and he said—well, he said I could reconsider if you could get us on that Dog Whisperer show. I didn't know anything about dog training or behavior at the time. I just wanted to keep my dog, so I made all these phone calls and actually got in touch with the Dog Whisperer show production team. They asked me to send video of my dog being aggressive so they could consider me for the show. I said I didn't want to do that because I didn't want to put him in a position where he had to be aggressive. So I didn't go with the show. But I did look for a dog trainer. Not knowing anything about anything, I Googled dog trainers and hired the first person on the list. That person put Boogie on a prong collar—he became more subdued but also more scared of people, more prone to lashing out and lunging. I got really confused about what to do. There was a dog behavior column online, and I wrote in. I said I have this dog, we were getting some training, he's aggressive, he's on a prong collar, and he doesn't seem to like people anymore. The person who replied was Grisha Stewart. She said get rid of the prong collar and look into this thing I'm developing called Behavior Adjustment Training. She opened the door for me to start investigating other methods—I wasn't aware there was a whole world of dog training that was not based on punishment and force and fear. I found trainers like Emily Larlham on YouTube, I found Dr. Sophia Yin's website, I started reading books by Karen Pryor. I wanted to learn how to clicker train, but my trainer at the time was not interested in teaching me, so I decided to stop going to those classes. I was looking for another trainer, and through the internet and lurking on different Yahoo groups, I found Sarah Owings, who is a Karen Pryor trainer. She decided to be my trainer and we tried BAT with Boogie. Sarah introduced me to books and DVDs on dog body language—the Rugaas book, the Rugaas DVD—and I was just blown away by all this information that was not on TV, that nobody knew anything about. I wondered, why don't people know this? We should know this. We should be taught this. So I started illustrating. I had a blog for Boogie and my training lessons, and I would illustrate things I was learning through our BAT sessions, illustrate dog body language stuff from the DVDs, from observing my dog. Grisha Stewart decided to hire me to illustrate a book. I got in touch with Dr. Sophia Yin, and she hired me to illustrate her dog body language charts and all her other educational material. From that point forward, just through word of mouth, more people hired me for dog body language charts, and I just started doing a whole lot of those.

[12:42]  Colleen Pelar

That's amazing. It's unfortunate that your initial foray was so harmful, and yet all of the good that has come from it because you were so committed to Boogie—and also committed to learning what would help. And the people you've shared here—Sarah Owings, Grisha Stewart—these are all known names now, but they weren't then.

[13:04]  Lili Chin

They weren't known at the time, exactly.

[13:19]  Colleen Pelar

When I started training, which was in 1991, there was nothing—very few books, very few weekend workshops or conferences, no schools of it. And the idea of you documenting your lessons with illustration, because that was just natural for you because of your skills—being a way that you were able to rehash and synthesize what you had done, but also make it in a way that other people could see and learn from—that's so cool how it all fell together for you. I am so curious: did Boogie come with his name, or did you pick it?

[14:31]  Lili Chin

I picked it. Well, actually it was my ex-partner who chose Boogie. We were trying to think of a name that was kind of fun, and it suited him.

[14:48]  Colleen Pelar

If I see a little Chin Boston Terrier, I know it's Boogie—it might not be your Boogie, but I think his name when I see one. He's famous. I always like names I haven't encountered before, because they are personal to the people who chose them. In terms of your work now, is it almost all animal stuff, or do you have an entire passion that's completely unrelated?

[15:30]  Lili Chin

My work—the work I earn a living doing—is all animal stuff. There are dogs, but now I also draw cats and other species, depending on what I'm hired to do. I've done body language poses for guinea pigs and rats and bunnies, hedgehogs, a cockatoo. I love it because I'm learning at the same time. But other stuff—lately I've been doing a lot of protest art, given what's going on in the country. Some of that is animal-related, some of it is not. For example, there's a giant data center being threatened to be built in my neighborhood, one mile from our home. It's going to emit air pollution and noise, be on our power grid, consume tons of resources, and make it an unsafe place for our community. So I've been doing art to protest that for the people in our neighborhood. That's sort of extracurricular stuff I'm not being paid to do—I just feel compelled to do it.

[17:04]  Colleen Pelar

So in your spare time you do art, and paid time you do art—just different art.

[17:09]  Lili Chin

Yeah, just different art.

[17:15]  Colleen Pelar

In terms of the animal work, what percentage is dog stuff versus other animals?

[17:21]  Lili Chin

I would say a large percentage is still dog stuff, because maybe I'm better known in the dog community than in other communities. When Boogie passed away at 16 in 2020, and then the following year my husband and I adopted two cats, so I've been doing some cat infographics for cat behaviors. But I think there are more dog people than cat people in general.

[17:50]  Colleen Pelar

There are more people being paid to help people with the behavior of dogs than cats. There's sort of an expectation that a dog's behavior can be modified, and culturally—not my belief, but culturally—there's a sense of you get what you get with cats. That's not true, there are definitely cat specialists. But people don't say as their first piece of advice, oh, you really need to call a cat trainer. I'm curious what cat behavior's trajectory will be, given how the internet brings people together in ways they never expected.

[18:57]  Lili Chin

I think a big difference in the cat behavior work I've been learning about and illustrating is that there's a bigger focus on the environment—environmental enrichment—like how you set up litter boxes and cat trees and food and water and beds. And play. Most people assume you get a cat and you don't have to do anything, whereas you have to walk your dog every day, but you actually should be playing with your cat every day or interacting with them.

[19:38]  Colleen Pelar

Yeah. And you have two now—what do you like to play with them?

[19:46]  Lili Chin

One of them is food-obsessed, so a lot of it is like puzzle toys with treats, or I toss treats or put them up high and he has to climb and get them. And the other one, Shimmy—she's obsessed with a little laser light, and we make a little game out of it. She loves to pounce on it, and then we turn the light off when she catches it. She loves her little toys as well.

[20:20]  Colleen Pelar

From the perspective of learning to draw dog body language and behavior, one of the big challenges in teaching people body language is that dogs' bodies are so different breed to breed. What do you think is most important when you're trying to convey this in different animals?

[20:48]  Lili Chin

I like to know what the baseline is for a relaxed animal. If I know what a relaxed dog looks like, I can use that to see the difference between that and not relaxed, and different degrees of stress or excitement. Does that make sense?

[21:15]  Colleen Pelar

It does. I was watching a video in an ACE free-work class the other day, and they were just pointing out slight differences in the spine of a dog just based on body position—is the spine a little bit hunched, or is the spine extended—and just making adjustments based on that. I always liked the work of cartoonist Brian Bassett from a strip called Red and Rover—the body language of that dog in simple lines was delightful. When I saw your work, it kind of reminded me of some of his. And then as I saw more, I was so attracted to the simplicity of how you convey things, because that's one of those simple-but-not-easy pieces. You make it look easy. Have you always leaned toward that style?

[22:56]  Lili Chin

Yeah, I guess I always have. I'm a cartoonist—I come from a cartooning background. And in animation, you have to draw things as simply as possible, because you're drawing the same thing over and over again in a series of drawings to create movement. If it's too complicated, it's going to be really hard to do. So yes, I have that background.

[23:31]  Colleen Pelar

What's something that's particularly interesting to you that you've learned—either about yourself or your work—as a result of doing so much work on animal body language and behavior?

[23:46]  Lili Chin

I love learning about body language. I love learning to observe things that I otherwise may not have seen. And because I love animating, it feels a little bit like that—although I don't do any animating anymore, it kind of taps into that love.

[24:20]  Colleen Pelar

And you don't do any animation for fun? It's just not a piece of your life?

[24:26]  Lili Chin

Not really. A lot of that has to do with technology—the software that goes with animating has changed. I no longer know how to use what's available now. I mean, I have the skill—I can do it—it's just creating a finished product is a little more complicated. I'd have to learn some new things.

[24:55]  Colleen Pelar

If you could do body language pictures of any animal you have not yet done, what might it be?

[25:04]  Lili Chin

Anything, really—anything I haven't done, I'd be happy to do. Last year I did start a chart of snake images. I sort of connected with a snake behavior consultant, Lori Torrini, and she's made all these videos on snake body language—how to tell when they're relaxed and stressed and different degrees of stress. So I started drawing those. That was really interesting to me. I'm really open to anything.

[25:49]  Colleen Pelar

Do you think of yourself, in a sense, as a pet professional? This is a show about pet professionals.

[26:00]  Lili Chin

Oh, no, I don't. I think of myself as somebody who works with or works for pet professionals. I would like to think that what I'm doing is helpful to pet professionals.

[26:16]  Colleen Pelar

It absolutely is. And if we could go back and tell 10-year-old Lili that this is what she'd be doing, what would she have thought?

[26:27]  Lili Chin

This is so totally unexpected from what I thought I would be doing, even 10 years ago. When I was working in animation after school, I had no idea that I was going to adopt a dog and that I'd be drawing dogs for a living. Completely unforeseen.

[26:52]  Colleen Pelar

And so delightful. It's just kind of cool how things work out. I'm going to ask a totally self-serving question now: what advice do you have for someone who is learning to draw or cartoon to make it easier or better?

[27:10]  Lili Chin

Okay, so this is how I learned. I did life-drawing classes when I was 16, 17. You can focus on different things when you draw. You can focus on capturing movement—the whole body—and a good exercise is to time yourself, give yourself very short periods of time to see as much as you can and get that down. It doesn't have to look beautiful or perfect. It's just an eye-hand coordination exercise. The other thing you can focus on is detail and contour—that is where you can go as slow as you want, take your time. Again, it's all about learning to see. You're training your eyes to see as much as possible in as short a time as possible, and training your eye to focus on what's in front of you rather than what's in your head.

[28:24]  Colleen Pelar

Both of those tips are really helpful for observing behavior in general. It is a little bit about quickly snatching an image in your head of what's happening, being able to see it, but also being able to focus in on some of that detail. I always ask my guests to share some words that have meaning for them, and the words you shared were: How can I make this simpler and easier? Can you tell me a little bit about how that phrase came into your life and what it means to you?

[29:09]  Lili Chin

I'm thinking of the books I worked on—Doggy Language and Kitty Language and Dogs of the World. When I was writing and illustrating those books, I was really focused on making the information as simple and easy to understand as possible, because I want as many people as possible to be able to understand what I was writing about. And it's actually not an easy thing to do—you could be using too many words, you could be using jargon. It's very easy to use jargon when it's all around you and you take it for granted. I remember the very first draft I wrote of Dogs of the World—I shared it with my husband, who is not a dog behavior person at all. He doesn't know the jargon, and he immediately picked out all the jargon words that didn't even register to me as jargon.

[30:16]  Colleen Pelar

It's always worth it to have someone who doesn't know what you're talking about read something and see when it slips in. But that idea of how can I make this simpler and easier—that is hard work on the part of the teacher. It is an effort to think about how can I simplify something, how can I make it more accessible, more digestible and understandable, so someone can actually use it and move forward. You obviously did it very well, because your books have been well received and are useful resources. So it was good of you to choose that frame for working through them. We say things like, well, it's simple, but not easy—that phrase comes up a lot—and I think there's a truism to that. We underestimate how challenging it can be to simplify something.

[31:35]  Lili Chin

Yeah. Or there's also that—I don't know, is it an internet meme—the one that says, teach it to me like I'm five?

[31:47]  Colleen Pelar

Yeah. I never liked the title of the For Dummies brand because I thought it was a little insulting, but I loved the concept. Teach it to me like I'm five is more accessible to me because I don't see any judgment in someone being five. That seems to have judgment on someone being a dummy. Teach it to me like I'm five—it's really, really helpful. And it's fascinating how many things I think I understand that I cannot teach to somebody as if they were five, because I'll slip in the jargon, or I'll fall back on a frame of reference I expect they'll know but they don't, or I need to explain too much. So teach me like I'm five—that's good advice. Well suited to your art too, with the clean lines and simple images. If people wanted to learn more about you and your work, how could they do that?

[32:54]  Lili Chin

There's my website, which is DoggieDrawings.net—D-O-G-G-I-E-D-R-A-W-I-N-G-S. I've got a lot of work on there and free resources you can download. I also have a shop where you can buy prints and pins and various things. It's a portfolio of different infographics I've done for different clients. There's a whole range of stuff.

[33:27]  Colleen Pelar

A whole lot of things to explore when they go visit there. Well, I thank you so much for talking with me today, Lili—it's really been a treat. That's our conversation for today. If something we talked about resonated, I invite you to sit with it. Notice what feels true and what you want to explore further. You don't have to have it all figured out to start moving toward what matters. Whatever showed up for you today—clarity, questions, even resistance—trust that it's pointing you toward something important. For more support, join my weekly notes at ColleenPelar.com. And until next time, remember: you are enough, always, just as you are.