Getting at their level is a good suggestion, but most of the time I preferr to bring them up to my level since crawling around on my belly and getting up off my knees isn't as easy as it use to be. 
This is why I use a large platform I built when shooting formal shots of dogs. The added height also makes most smaller dogs think (hence pause) before jumping down.
I also shoot different between outside and inside, since the lighting is going to be different. I'm lucky and have a full set of studio lights for indoors, so lighting is almost never a problem... except when I have the lights set up with the idea the dog is going to face a certain way and they keep wanting to face the opposite.
If you can afford them, for indoors, the biggest help would be to get extra lighting. This will go a long way in improving your indoor shots. Stay away from the halogen hot lights. They are cheap and they can light up a barn, but they are, well, hot. Hot enough to start a fire if they fall over or something lands on them. They also create a very harsh light and in most cases is going to be too bright and contrasty in a normal room.
There are a number of fairly in-exepnsive cool light setups (these use multiple florescent bulbs) as well as electric strobes and moderately priced higher power studio flashes. You can get kits that have lights, light stands and umbrellas or reflectors anywhere for around a $100 on the low end to under $200 for better quality and more powerful 2 and 3 light kits. You don't need cables either as the flash on your camera can be used to set them off. Be careful though, the more you learn to use them and the better your pictures come out, the more you are going to want to add to them.
Background is another consideration. Unless you are one of the types that has a nice big living room with open walls or very photogenic settings, having the TV, dog toys, tables, couches and chairs in the background are going to be distracting. I doubt you will want to go the route of having painted backgrounds and 9 foot rolls of background paper like I have, but getting a large muslin cloth to use as a background doesn't have to be that expensive either. I perfer dark over a white one though, as it keeps from competing with the dog.
For baiting, I've found a lot of dogs are different. I've shot some that were food driven, some where toy driven, some reacted to noises, some to movement and some, no matter what you did, didn't react to nothing. If your dog likes food, then his favorite treat will work, or for something different, stick cheese, pieces of hot dog or something else might keep his attention and get him to pose for you. I've also used the squeeky maker out of squeeky toys (I collected them for a long time and had all kinds of noise makers) and even the baby farm animal and other noise boxes where you pull the string to get it to make a noise worked very well. With most dogs, something like this only works very well once, then they lose interest in it. So if you use something like this, be ready the first time you try it. That's when you will get your most interesting look or reaction.
When I first started shooting our dogs, they could care less, but once they learned that when my camera came out and the lights and background got set up they were going to get a lot of treats and attention, they would rush to get on the platform, pushing each other off to be the first one to get their picture taken. I wish I had taken movies of some of the epesodes when I set up to do dog portraits.
Having a fast camera is important, but also having one that can shoot at a high ISO setting and still give you noise free shots. You can slow your camera down and open up the fstop all the way open, but then movement is going to start affecting your shots and a very short depth of field (how much is in focus from the front to the back is depth of field). Sometimes you have to go with a higher ISO so you can get a faster shutter speed to stop movement or at least minimize it. Some times you want to get everything in focus from nose to tail so you are going to need to stop down your fstop to increase the depth of field. If you don't have any choice, remember to try and always get the eyes in focus. If you can get the eyes in focus, then usually the depth of field will cover the tip of the nose to the ears. If you get the nose in focus then maybe the eyes will be in focus but the ears and beyound won't. If you get the ears, then the nose won't be in focus. But having the eyes in focus will usually cover all the head.
I don't know if your camera has a delay from when you push the shutter button to when it actually snaps the picture, but if it does then that's going to make it harder to get action shots. You will need to learn to anticapate your shots so you can take the shot before the dog has moved past where you wanted. If you have instant shutter click when you push the button, it will be a lot better.
Also you will want to use as high a quality setting as you can. Digital cameras let you take different quality jpeg and usually what is called Raw. I shoot everything in Raw myself, but then I never know what lighting conditions I'm going to be shooting in and Raw lets me get every bit of information out of the digital file. Most people can use high quality jpeg and do just fine. The higher the quality the bigger the file is, but the more information the digital file has and the bigger the image you can print. Low quality is good for posting on web sites and smaller prints. Medium and High quality will let you print larger prints, with the High quality letting you print very large prints that still look good at the larger sizes (assuming they were in focus and properly exposed to begin with). What ever memory card you camera takes (mine takes both CF and the mini card) get a card that is big enough that you can take a good number of pictures before you have to swap out... and get extras. Some people say to use a small card so if you lose the card or the images you don't lose that much but I'm the opposite. I don't want to have to swap cards in the middle of a good shoot so I use large cards that will let me take several hundred Raw images at a time. So consider how many shots you are likely to take and carry extra cards and an extra battery or two if you go out to shoot. Nothing worse than being out at the park or shooting the dogs playing in the snow and run out of memory space or your battery runs down. I hate it when that happens because right afterwards will be the shot of a life time.
The number one thing you can do though is read and re-read and read it a couple more times, the manual that came with your camera. Learn all the features and what they do. So many people buy decent cameras with lots of features and they never learn what it can do and when to use them. Practice and practice and practice some more. The better you know your camera, the more prepared you will be for taking quick shots and also the less you will fumble around when you are trying to take pictures.
Even if you don't get lights and flashes and all of that stuff, learn about fstops, shutter speeds and ISO settings. If you learn the basics of how they all interact with each other, then you will be way ahead of most people and your pictures will show it. Most of all, just have a lot of fun with it and take lots of pictures.
Mike