Pet portraits: $1,400 well-spent?

But surely the queen of the castle is Amanda Jones, a Massachusetts-based photographer who has been called both the Annie Leibovitz and the Richard Avedon of pet photographers. From her home in North Adams, she flies across the United States, hitting about 20 cities a year to do pet portraits.

After a 2005 profile of Ms. Jones appeared in the New York Times, says the photographer, "we got a few celebrity clients," including Mary Tyler Moore and Danielle Steel, and Ms. Jones's schedule filled up "for two years straight."

She now charges $1,400 for a session, which lasts an hour and a half.

"It's just a huge industry," says Julie Glick, a Toronto-based painter who kicked off her career as a dog-portrait painter with a show of neighbourhood dogs in her local gallery. She has done about 15 paintings of dogs, starting at $400. "It's really indicative of how our relationship with pets has changed."

"Even though we look at pet portraiture as sometimes kind of kitsch, or, 'It's too cute, you've got a picture of Foo Foo up there,' it can be so much more substantial than that. They're poignant, beautiful creatures," Ms. Glick says. "Dogs are a metaphor for the plight of mankind, if that's not too grand a statement."