How about the radial method. It is described in the "Basket Boy" tutorial. You can download the pdf from the soft site, if you are on maintanance. If not, it should be on the CD's. Using this method, you could make his head, body, and tail quite easily from the same surface.
The tutorial also describes how to model symetrical halves, where one half constantly updates from changes done to the other. Then you will learn how to close the seam and make one continuous surface from this halves.
You might try www.edharris.com too. He has links to a lot of soft tutorials.
Hope this helps,
Urp