Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II might have a lot of the world on a string, but bring up the subject of doggie karma, and that string morphs into a giant ball of grimy, dismembered twine. In 1993, Her Highness’ best friend Zenobie ran away during a stroll in the woods north of Copenhagen (searches by thousands of volunteers failed to turn up a trace). Celimene, Zenobie’s replacement, died 12 years later on the heels of a lingering illness. And in 2006, 2-year-old Helike was rushed to an animal hospital after being hit by a car. All three animals were dachshunds, which may illustrate Margrethe’s genuine love for the breed (i.e., her affection for dogs is motivated by the animal, not by public opinion, and that’s cool). All three animals were central figures in trillions of press photos–the monarchy is wildly popular in Denmark, and anything in its connection is the target of a certain overkill. But there’s no record of all three animals, or even one, as the subject of a painted portrait. And that’s a shame. Tributes like that are defined as acts of love by the labor- intensiveness alone. Just ask somebody who creates them. Deirdre O’Byrne–the same oil painter and watercolorist who’s made such a splash with her urban and rural landscapes, seascapes and, yes, human beings–would have made an exceptional pet portrait artist to the queen’s Court. It’s not enough, the native Dubliner said, to simply clone eyes, noses and jaws. She’s after expression and temperament, just as she seeks to capture the mood in her other work by being in the moment with her locale. Nothing escapes her scrutiny, down to the natural color of the coat. Purplish snouts and orangish manes often underscore dew-eyed expressions of chagrin, as if to remind the animal there’s more to life than food and slippers. “Because I love color,” the Mission Valley resident explains, “I started introducing a lot of color into the paintings, like exaggerating, just pushing color. People say ‘how do you pick the colors.’ It’s more my feeling toward the photograph or the pet itself. I just go with what I’m feeling, and that’s how I come up with the color scheme.” The universal canine countenance makes those feelings come easy. “They look sad,” she says. “That’s the thing with dogs. When they have their normal face, they do look a little sad. You have to try and get their tongues sticking out to make ’em smile.” It’s one thing to manufacture that smile, which the 48-year-old O’Byrne has been doing since she was probably 19. It’s another, she said, to encourage its natural evolution in a healthy pet. The best portraits, after all, are the byproducts of the best exercise regimens. “I had a neighbor,” O’Byrne explains, “who had a great Dane–two great Danes–in an apartment. I was, like, ‘I seriously hope she’s lookin’ after those dogs.’ But she was really good. She walked them every single morning and every lunch and every evening. I felt better knowing she was looking after them. If you’re the kind of pet owner who takes them out, like, once a week, you shouldn’t even have a pet. Twice a day, minimum, is when a dog should be taken out.” Lore has it that Margrethe’s dogs were exercised faithfully–an outdoor stroll, in fact, led to Zenobie’s disappearance. That’s the last we’ll see of the royal little tyke–not so, O’Byrne said, for many pet owners who choose to capture their pets’ visages for posterity. Dogs, cats, birds, horses, rabbits, snakes, lizards, even ant farms: Pet portraiture is big biz these days. New York’s Doyle Dogs in Art auction cites a record $590,000 paid for a single work in 2005 (it was expected to go for less that a tenth of that figure). A hilarious doggie courtroom scene painting was expected to fetch up to $50,000 at this year’s event. A 2008 Massachusetts art sale, featuring several portraits of wildlife and sporting animals in action, netted $3.2 million, with transactions held on more than 550 lots. And the retail pet business itself isn’t exactly slouching. Food, toys, clothes, even health insurance and burial plots: The National Retail Federation estimates that the industry will rake in some $20 billion during 2009, the recession notwithstanding. “I think animals are the new generation of babies,” O’Byrne says. “A lot of people aren’t having kids nowadays, and they have pets. They’re just as important as another person. I just think that a portrait of your pet is something you have forever. Sadly, all our pets don’t live forever, and a few of my clients have asked me to paint their pets who’ve just passed away.” O’Byrne says she recently received an e-mail from a gentleman whose terrier was the central figure in one of her portraits. “It just gives him a lot of peace of mind when he looks at the painting. It just really brings him a lot of comfort. That really means a lot to me.” And forget the record sales and bids. For cat owner O’Byrne, the dollar mentality pales against her genuine respect for the portrait’s subject. “Dogs are just so fun to look at,” she explains. “They make you laugh when you look at them. All your problems go away when you have a dog or a cat around. Everything melts. I think they’re the most therapeutic things ever, on this whole land. “If I ever saw anybody doing anything wrong to a dog, they’d have to deal with me.” It’s a cinch Queen Margrethe feels the same way. After all, those thousands of volunteers who looked for Zenobie showed up chiefly because Her Highness appealed to their public goodness of nature; to boot, she seems like the kind of person who’d be looking out for your animal’s safety if the shoe were on the other foot. Nonetheless, one seriously major element is missing from the royal palace–a vestige of the dearly departed family member whose predicament brought all those people out in the first place. Your solution, however, may be as near as Mission Valley. ­For more information on O’Byrne’s artwork, visit odoodle.com.