This is Alberta, one of my border collies.
DSC_4265_01.NEF.xmp (6.6 KB)
DSC_4265.NEF (22.6 MB)
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What a beautiful girl 
!
Her coat looks magnificent … she is obviously a well-loved and cared-for pooch!
Thanks for sharing.
The very bright reflections from the top of the head and along the muzzle are unfortunately blown, but tweaking highlight reconstruction and some additional exposure adjustment with masking brought some of the texture back. I’d tentatively suggest spot metering for the brightest part of the subject and/or dialing in 2/3 of a stop of negative exposure compensation.
DSC_4265.NEF.xmp (9.9 KB)
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Great looking dog @Tim. Thanks for sharing.
In the spirit of the PlayRaw topic, I would like to point out some things.
I agree with @martin.scharnke about blown highlights. Alberta’s coat has huge dynamic range, so you may have to underexpose by at least two stops to get the white patch properly exposed. Very tricky! I would also like to point out the heavy yellow colour cast in your jpeg. Furthermore, looking down at the subject in a portrait usually gives unflattering perspective. It is therefore recommended to have the lens at the eye line of the subject.
Here is an attempt using RawTherapee 5.8
DSC_4265.jpg.out.pp3 (12.3 KB)
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Yes, thank you. I have discovered from my use of darktable that my Nikon D3300 is overexposing almost every shot. Last night, I learned how to reduce the exposure even in the auto modes; I will be trying that technique, soon.
Thanks. I had noticed some yellow cast, too, especially on her front legs. But I had been adjusting the color balance to try to get the grass to look correct. Maybe I missed that, too.
Here are another photo of Alberta and one of my big male border collie, Ranger. I reset my camera to use a -0.7 EV exposure. I am not seeing nearly as much blown highlights in darktable. Right now, I’m only uploading the processed jpgs. If anyone wants to see the raw files and xmps, let me know.
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I am still seeing a little yellow cast on Alberta. I tried to adjust it in Color Balance, but I couldn’t make it work, so I reset the colors back to the defaults.
PS - Ranger is not much of a poser. I get him the way I want him, raise the camera, and he does something else. 
Since that was one of my earliest darktable attempts, I have re-edited this with my current (hopefully improved) workflow in dt 3.4. Yes, the top of her nose and her forehead are still blown. I tried to deal with that in filmic reconstruct, to little benefit. But I think the edit is improved in several other respects.
DSC_4265.NEF.xmp (8.4 KB)
I had a go at your beautiful dog.
Love her coat. It is a bit hard though to determine what colours are actually present. Just about all the above entries show something different 
Tried to get as much separate colour detail out of it as I could.
Anyway, here’s my edit:
alberta.border.collie.pp3 (16.9 KB) RawTherapee 5.8-2740-g6d1ba3285
EDIT: I have a tendency to make my initial edits too dark… Fixed it. Again.
I believe that at least the colors of my posted edit, today, are fairly accurate.
Technically, I set the white balance to camera reference, and the color calibration to D50. The CCT strip shows as a very nice white.
And, to my eye, that looks very much like the actual coloration of my dog. 
Interesting how colours are perceived…
First of all: I’m not the one that can actually compare what’s on screen with the actual dog, so I believe you when you say they are very much alike!
All those different colours in the different edits, and its not just the dog; Have a look at the different colours of green the grass has.
I was curious though and did a little comparison test. Except for the jpeg I extracted from the RAW file, all are bare minimum edits; Only the white balance has been changed the rest is as neutral as possible.
This one is the jpeg extracted from the raw file:
This is RawTherapee (dev). Neutral + WB’s RGBgrey auto setting:
darktable: WB D65 + CC CAT16 auto detect via picker:
And last darktable: WB only, using picker:
Comparing these with all the edits made in this thread it is immediately obvious that the final result is so much more then just setting the “correct” white balance. I put correct between quotes because I think that is rather subjective. I like my whites to be white to start with and on top of that comes the artistic part. This can be warmer/colder and/or a colour gradient.
This is another nice example of being there and being able to compare the real thing to the image, be it on screen or printed, makes all the difference.
Anyway, just my early morning thoughts while having my first mug of coffee…
Thanks for uploading this one, enjoyed editing it!
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in this context one should make sure to have a calibrated monitor for image processing. otherwise comparisons or targeted processing would be rather impossible, as you cannot really see the colors and contrasts.
maybe that’s why the big differences in color and contrast can be seen in some pictures.
and yes, everyone has their own taste for their picture look 
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Heh. The whole thing is pretty problematic for me, as I have a neurological disease that severely affects my eyes. I’m not sure a better or calibrated monitor would help much.