Anim8or and lithunwrap.. great combo. I hate things that are complicated. everything I do is in anim8or. you really should give it a go. you would be amazed at what you can build using extrude and moving points around starting from a cube or a cylinder.
and you can lower the poly count by merging faces and moving points to overlap and then merge points. all in all I think anim8or has allot going for it. it's only drawback compared to working with dogs is the lack of prebuilt parts, but you make your own and then everything is 100% original.
anyways, that's just my 2 cents.
a few examples of some simple models I have made can be found here..
TGC Forums.. My 3D thread
Cheers!