soz to say this but wen this happens to me i generally delete the faces in that area and use say extrude edge tool and remake that area.

but make sure that all the verts in that area are fully merged first

mayb some1 else will mave a less drastic measure

ps. i havent done the full dog tut but u should clean up those 3sided into quads and this will also make the model better both in poly mode and sub divs - but if this is how the tuts saiys plz forgive me