This is a sculpting base that I created. I used 3DSMAX to create the base mesh, applied some general tweaks to the appearance and ported back to Max to add the ears, straightening topology as I progressed. It was surprisingly simple. There's no inside mouth cavity, so I'll add that soon enough. I hope that the pole positions are ok for deformation though.
Smooth Polycount: 12,160
Base Polycount: 1,520