Lil rundown of how I do.

That last husky drawing was so bad I had to figure out how I draw puppers.
I like to do this exercise, where to figure out how to draw an animal in my own style I first see what my style wants to come out as. So without any references of any sort, I draw that animal as different individuals, and at the end, look for what my hand naturally wants to draw like. What sort of "patterns" it does trying to cohesively stay my style yet show individual characters. THEN I look up the species I was going for and see how well it matches. This turned out really well. I can see the species I was trying to convey and still could go even more stylized if I wanted to push it.

The problem when I draw most new animals I'm unfamiliar with, is that I rely heavily on shapes to convey their species rather than their features, and then stick that on a humanoid body, so they always end up stiff and boxy. Nowadays I've been experimenting with switching and mixing around bodies to see what I like. As in the 80s you could have sharp humanoids (think Thundercats series), smooth cartoons (think Disney/early CGI), and simplified cartoons (Think Boomerang/Hanna Barbara). I love all three, and enjoy doing all 3 separately. But this can be a problem if I'm to open commissions again, it could be complicated, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that just yet. I'm hoping all 3 types can be utilized separately without confusion rather than me having to pick a style to stick to. :(