Horse, dog, or other furry critter tutorial?

I would say your best bet is to use oils to paint them.  Oils blend really well and you can really use them to get the different shades and highlights in coats that you cant really get with other types.

Apart from that I would say... get references, go online find pictures of the animal in question and save it.  open it in paint, use the dropper to get the different colors and make a pallet on your computer. 

THEN you print out the pallet, not the picture, and mix your oils on it, to make sure you get the colors correct.

Go back and read my next post there--I give a quick explanation of how to do a reasonable, east job of getting a nice finish on a horse!

Thanks Karl! I really like your work that you posted there along with our new member's work who started the thread. I have some dogs I am working on currently and several horses to do in my stash. They dogs are looking pretty weak and lacking something to  make them match their humans.

For my LOTR miniatures, I used acrylics and retarder to blend various colors on horses as well as the robes and cloaks of the characters.Wetblending can give a lot of great effects. There are a couple of other techniques you might find helpful too.

What specifically are the animals lacking? Depth? Shading and highlights? What is your preferred medium?