Thank you Rachael for this very interesting class! I love painting animals, but I find that painting animals we know is, just like drawing/painting people, quite challenging. 

I chose to paint my extended family's goldendoodle, Romeo. Such a sweetheart, but always happy, so this was the only non blurry picture I got:

And I followed the class on painting the cat to get the result, except for the background; I replaced the interior lacking contrast with a green-grass background like you mentioned in the dalmatian class. I found the curly fur extremely difficult to depict though, so if you have any advice on that I am all ears! Also, I am not sure I did him justice. And finally, I went too heavy on the yellow ochre first layer (I saw yellow, but after the fact I am not sure), so I played heavily with white watercolor and white gouache highlights to recup the white I had lost for his fur.