Marie,
your work is very nice. In CS4, under Image/Adjustments there is a tab for Shadows/Highlights. If you go in there, you can lighten the shadows a bit and, unless you've completely blown out the highlights, you can recover some of the highlight detail.

With dark subjects like the Doxies it's a good idea to get familiar with that adjustment. The key is to get back some of the detail without losing the fact that they're black and not grey. So use the adjustment judiciously.

Jim