Every good chop starts with a painful extraction.

I found an awesome cliff for our dog friend to take flight from, but it wasn't quite the right composition. I wanted it a little wider. I placed Fido on the background and then copied the background twice, sliding it over a little each time to get the composition I wanted.

I used a rectangle marquee to stretch the misty areas out and the stamp tool with a 0 hardness brush to blend it all together.

Now, we don't want the picture getting morbid. Fido is not making a jump for it, but rather taking flight. So I found some great wings for him.

I did another painful extraction. (I am a full believer in the pen tool and paths for extractions.)

...and moved them onto Fido.

I was lucky enough (or patient enough), to find a pair of wings that actually matched the dog's coloring, but not exactly, I used a hue/saturation layer to adjust the color closer to the dog's and used a little masking and smudging to blend them together at the shoulder.

I wanted to make the dog look like he was really there, so I created a solid color layer based off of the mist and put it on top with a "Soft Light" Blending mode. I didn't want it to muddy the whole picture so I selected just the dog and his wings and created a mask on the solid color layer, so that only they were affected. I also put a mask on the dog layer and revealed some of the grass around his foot. as well as used the burn tool on the grass to create a shadow.

Our friend looked a little lonely, so I gave him some birds to chase, a slightly less painful extraction.

The finishing touches get a little crazy. For me it still looks "okay". So to bump it up a notch, I do the same thing to the solid color layer with the birds, so they look there (create a mask on the solid color layer, so that the birds have the mossy grey soft light.) I also copy the background layer and add 2 curves adjustment layers, one that's a little too white, and one that's a little too black. I use a soft brush on each, pulling out lights and blacks, to make the whole image more dimensional.

Finally I create one more copy of the background and put it on top of everything. I make the layer brighter. I use filter>distort>diffuse glow, which gives the whole layer an extra misty and slightly grainy look, and set the blend mode to "Soft Light"...and we are ready for take off!