Cody

Great portrait! Loving those eyes and his expression. When I do my pet portraits, I usually have about 5-6 layers building up the fur tones, colors, highlights and shadows. Mostly, when I get to this stage (of your painting) I do the same thing - I set it aside and see how it dries - or almost dry - and evaluate if I need to add more of something. Cody looks like a finished portrait, but you may find things in your reference photo that you want to correct. A beautiful portrait!

I am amazed by y’all that can paint animals so well. Cody looks like he’s thinking “can I move now “! lol

@Newbeginings. You have a wonderful white color doggy, and what you did is already fantastic. I think to enhance the portrait further two major things will need to be done:
1. Increase darkness of background around head /back to make his face focal point. I understand that photo might have a different colors but we are artists :) The hues that you used are good and artistic in the background, they are just too light to separate dog from them and not allow to make Cody's face a focal point.
2. Convert photo of your dog and the photo of this portrait into Black and White and check where you missed darks and lights. As soon you bring dark spots to the correct level Cody will look even more real.

I surely cannot paint animals as well as you guys do and cannot comment on techniques for fur and eyes and those are general comments more related to the value and composition.

Sunnylady thanks for the comments on Cody. I will try doing the things you suggested. Thank you for taking time to comment

Maybe as option you can try digitally alter in some basic editor on your computer/phone and see which things you like and which not.

Charming, that expression is priceless!