A trip to Fitchburg's first annual Art Fair in the beautiful weather last Saturday yielded no less than three artists (all from the Madison area) who specialize in pet portraits, using various media:

• Mark Dilley provides professional photo shoots at a location you choose (a boon to those of us whose pictures of our dogs are mainly big furry blurs), as well as canvas paintings created from photos or the mind's eye, up to sofa-sized.  His love of dogs was evident as he talked about (and even demonstrated) some of the great expressions he's been able to capture.
  http://www.ourthreearts.com/Mark/MarksPieces/Subgalleries/Dogs.html

• Kate Stormer creates sketches from photographs that owners provide, with a wonderful attention to detail - I honestly couldn't tell if some of her prints were photographs or sketches.  She also has a series of notecards and prints based on breed standards (sadly, she didn't have any pre-made sketches of nutty border collie/springer spaniel mutts).
  http://www.sketch-your-pet.com/gallery.htm

• Bill Buchanan specializes in wood mosaics, making incredible artwork by cutting individual pieces of wood and fitting them together to create a unique portrait.  He explained that the secret (other than getting his wife to help with the staining and sanding), is in setting the pieces at different depths to create a life-like appearance.
  http://www.customwoodarts.com/page2a.html

All of these sound like wonderful ways to capture the personality of your pet in a unique piece of art (and a lot less blurry, too).