Now we're cooking with gas, baby! They huskytaur rig is set up and behaving nicely. It's pretty much done except for a few, er... extra bits. Expect to see more soon.
I have only been using Blender exclusively for a few months now, so getting a complex/unusual rig like this up and running feels like a major accomplishment. To be honest the rigging portion of the character creation workflow was what I found the most intimidating, and also the last part I was looking forward to. But with some tutorials and a LOT of trial and error it wasn't so bad! I learn more of the program every time I use it, so it feels nice being at least a portion of the way up the learning curve. After building this one the others should be no sweat.
More to come as I continue the workflow between several characters.