3dmax + plugins ~ Maya...
Max itself isn't huge (it'll definitely do much more than you'll ever be using it for though), so I'd say got with whichever is cheapest. I learned 3dmax and have a few decent renders with that. Maya is much larger and has all the fur controls and shaders (plus a ton of other stuff) built in. Chances are that you won't even begin to touch that stuff though.
The default renderer for max isn't that great, and I'm not too sure about Maya's (I know it's not the best out there though). You can get renderman for maya, or Brazil for max and they're much better. Actually, the best default renderer probably belongs to Lightwave believe it or not... XSI is another amazing program, but it's ultra high end.
One thing I didn't even realize until just recently is that Alias|Wavefront (Maya), discreet (3dmax), and Softimage (XSI) are all Canadian companies...