I saw this when I was in London and loved it so I decided to model it. . . Not exactly, but I used it to base my statue off of. Anyway its just over 1000 tri.
Looks good. Before you go tossing extra polys into the tail to make it stand out, try playing with the smoothing groups. Put the tail on a seperate group. I think 1000 tris might be a tad high. Some polys could be reduced in the front legs, from the elbow to the ancle I would think you wouln't need so many? Looks great…