Dachshund races would be a good place to go for taking pictures and then selling them. Dachshund owners tend to be a bit nuts (it is ok...my mom owns 2 and my sister owns 2 dachshund/chihuahua mixes) and desperately in love with their dogs and anything having to do with them.
I used to do portraits (drawing on the computer, with pastels, and with charcoal...as in the picture below) by request. I started out doing it for some people I knew on an email list for beagle owners. It ended up branching out. I did some work for a couple different rescue groups, and somehow other people heard about me. Pretty soon I was getting more requests than I could handle at the time so I had to shut it down completely to give myself a break.
One idea...offer to do free photos of dogs for a local pound. Then, offer to do "after" pictures when the dog is placed and give one copy to the pound to use in newsletters or online but sell to the dog owner if they want.
Here is my portrait I did in charcoal of a dog named Murphy. Forgive the bad scan of the drawing. The drawing was just black and white charcoal on sand coloured matte board, but it lost a lot of the detail in being scanned.
I haven't started up doing dog photography portraits yet, though I figure I will before too long.
Oh, and I do know that many families want to have a portrait that includes their pets, but so many of the studios out there don't allow for dogs or cats. Either that or the family doesn't feel their pet would be well behaved enough outside of their home. Maybe you could start doing portrait sessions "on location" for people who love their dogs but have spoiled them to the point they can't take them anywhere.
Sara
