Realistic Dog Model Retopology

I'm seeking a skilled Blender artist to retopologize my realistic 3D dog model. The current mesh has many disconnected islands. I need a clean, connected, manifold, animation-ready quad mesh for quadruped rigging. It's essential to preserve my real dog's likeness and proportions.

Key Requirements:
- Clean, connected, manifold quad mesh
- Animation-ready for quadruped rigging
- Preserved likeness and proportions of real dog
- Ideally, guidance on edge flow

Preferred Skills and Experience:
- Expertise in Blender
- Strong understanding of topology and edge flow
- Experience with animal models, especially dogs
- Prior work with animation-ready rigs

Focus Areas:
- Face and eyes
- Legs and paws
- Tail and body

Please provide a portfolio showcasing similar work.

Additional project details:

This model represents my real dog, Ayana, so preserving her individual appearance is extremely important. The finished model should not become a generic dog or generic breed model. Her head shape, muzzle, ears, body proportions, legs, paws and tail must remain recognizably hers.

The current model was generated from multiple real reference photographs and already captures her appearance quite well. The main problem is the mesh topology: although it looks correct visually, it contains many disconnected and overlapping mesh islands, which makes reliable quadruped rigging difficult.

I am looking for a proper retopology rather than simply reducing the polygon count. The final topology should be clean, connected and manifold, with sensible quad edge flow around all areas that need to deform during animation, especially the shoulders, front and rear legs, paws, neck, jaw/head area and tail.

The goal is to create a high-quality master model that can later be rigged and animated in Blender. From this master, optimized versions may also be created for:
- use on a website / WebGL
- animated scenes for my Ayanaverse website
- possible use as an animated passenger character in American Truck Simulator, including VR use

The current working model has approximately 96,832 quad faces. I also have the original high-resolution source model and multiple real reference photographs of Ayana.

Texture preservation or transfer to the new topology is also important. If the existing UVs cannot reasonably be preserved during retopology, I would like the model to receive suitable UVs so that the existing appearance/texture can be transferred or baked onto the new mesh.

Please explain how you would approach the retopology and what deliverables you would provide. I would strongly prefer someone experienced with quadruped/animal topology and deformation, not only humanoid character retopology.

Ideally, I am looking for a complete animation-ready character, not only the retopology.

If you also have experience with quadruped rigging, I would be interested in having you complete the full character setup, including:

- professional retopology with animation-friendly quad edge flow
- clean, connected and manifold geometry
- UV setup and transfer/baking of the existing appearance and textures
- a complete quadruped skeleton/rig
- proper skinning and weight painting
- clean deformation of shoulders, hips, legs, paws, neck, head and tail
- preservation of Ayana's individual proportions and appearance
- basic animation testing to verify that the rig and topology deform correctly

The preferred final result would be a fully rigged and animation-ready Ayana master character in Blender, rather than only a repaired mesh.

Please state in your proposal whether you can provide:
1. Retopology only, or
2. The complete retopology + texture/UV + rigging + skinning/weight-painting package.

If you can provide the complete package, please quote this separately.

The rig should remain usable and editable in Blender and should not depend on proprietary tools or services that I would need to purchase separately.

The final deliverables should include the Blender source file and appropriate exported versions such as GLB/GLTF and/or FBX where technically suitable.

Important note about the source files:

The main 3D model I would like you to work with is approximately 40 MB. The project attachment limit here is 25 MB, so I cannot attach the complete model to this project post.

I can provide the full 3D model directly to the selected freelancer after initial contact.

For the project post, I can provide reference images and screenshots of the current model so you can evaluate its appearance and understand the topology issue.