For me an important aspect of photographing dogs and cats is having an uncluttered background.  When you get low to the ground to photograph at their level, you also get low enough to include chair legs, people legs, and everything else that is visible down low.  I don’t live and die by the ‘get down to their level’ rule for photographing babies and pets.  In fact, a colored floor – carpet, tile, even grass etc. – is often a wonderful background for a pet, so shooting down at them can be a plus!  In this image, the background was very light and that gave more of a portrait look to this image which I really liked.