John,
nice lighting and nice capture. Being in the right place at the right time makes for some great shots.

However, to really practice your pet photography, you need to do the following exercise:
1. get a dog. It can be your own or a friend's.
2. bring the dog to a particular location.
3. attach the dog to the location with superglue.
4. while holding the camera, lens, flash in your right hand, toss a toy or cookie with your left and capture the dog's expression at the exact moment he/she looks at the item you tossed.
5. ignore the toy/cookie if it hits you on the head. Make it look like you planned it that way.

Seriously, unplanned shots are great but if you're going to do pet photography, you need to set up a shoot where you're working a bit closer to the dog/cat and where you work on the most difficult aspect of pet photography: baiting. If you talk with James, Julie, Dee Dee and others, you'll find that getting expression, ears and head angle is the most difficult part of this particular discipline. To do that, you have to know what's correct and then figure out a way to get the animal to do it.

Oh, and by the way, some animals don't react to anything. I've actually jumped up and down to get some kind of expression from a dog -- and the look was "what kind of crazy guy is that?" Better that than blank stares.

Keep shooting. You can borrow my dogs if you want to practice.

Jim