Ok, so like I said, I feel this picture was lacking some impact. First step I felt in combating this was to crop out alot of the frame and focus on the doggy. Whilst this removes the context of the shot (ie. that it is an ornament on a door), I feel this is justified in the pursuit of impact. Next I converted to BW using an adjustment layer with 100% red. Then added alot of conrast using curves. Then gave a diffuse glow (with no grain) and film grain (in the artistic menu) from the filters menu. Then ran the burn shadow tool over the wall to the right to bring out some more texture, and in the top left just to darken the wall and make the head of the dog stand out more. Then ran dodge highlight tool over the collar and under the eye, to strengthen the highlights and make them stand out more. Then resized, sharpened and increased canvas size to produce a border.
I'm quite happy with the result. I'm very new to workshops so please excuse me if my techniques and explanations sound sloppy, but I think they are!