hm.. i'm kinda new to maya too, and my suggestion would be to use nurbs shapes to create the head, and using vertises and hull fix it up, and if u want u can even go in detail. This of course takes some time. but i'm sure there is a much better and fast way, i just dont know of it :p i suggest u download the dog tutorial and try it out first, that tutorial will give u basic knowledge about modeling. (its free too )