If approached as high key, it's wonderful... so that is the way I will go. I love that you saw potential in the original shot to salvage it and enter it in this category. It is unfortunate that more people didn't see it this way.
This is difficult to judge.
Do I say overexposed snapshot, or WOW a beautiful highkey portrait. Unfortunately my tendency is towards the first as the background is not uniform and distracts a little, and on my monitor (Manually calibrated) the neck and lower jaw blend into the background.. I would also have preferred a crop to have maybe included the ears.
Nice looking dog by the way.