I need some creative ideas

I got these pictures of my dog yesterday and I would like to manipulate them but I'm a bit unsure of where to start. I have looked around for tutorials, maybe I have been looking in the wrong places but I can't really see any that I feel would do the photos justice. I don't know exactly what I am aiming for I am open to any ideas.








Thanks so much for any help in advance.

Nice dog man! I think I would enhance colors in that first photo just an idea or maybe even remove the leach
Or pull out the dag and create a whole new surroundings that would make just the dog the main focus

hi,
my thoughts.. where the dog is, my himself... i get rid of that leach it very distracting!!! and doesn't do anything for the picture.... in fact just that alone i think be a improvement..

other ideas.... and there a lot....

now i would suggest , and it maybe because of my monitor but most of them appears need some curves adjust,emt done on them.... that should help with improving brightness and contrast...

on the closeup of the dog... maybe have the background blurred...

have you thought about making them into a painting or a sketch!!!! there a ton of of tutorials ..

you might take also a look at this freeware called photosketcher has some intering stuff.. here the link of some examples
http://www.fotosketcher.com/gallery.htm

I agree with everything said. Here is a quick example of what they said. The colors are still a little off. Removed leash, harness and unneeded shadows. Took some green out of the background. Improved depth of field with a few levels of Gaussian blur. Cropped and expanded background with Content Aware Scaling to fit the rule of thirds a little better. This is very quick and could easily look better, just a couple of ideas to make the dog pop more.

I love how a few simple things can make a photo look so much better! Great work.