Intro: There are the (probably) best solutions. But you have to know it and remember it and sometimes you have to hope that your Python version isn't too old or whatever the issue could be.
Then there are the most 'hacky' solutions. They are great and short but sometimes are hard to understand, to read and to remember.
There is, though, an alternative which is to to try to reinvent the wheel. - Why reinventing the wheel? - Generally because it's a really good way to learn (and sometimes just because the already-existing tool doesn't do exactly what you would like and/or the way you would like it) and the easiest way if you don't know or don't remember the perfect tool for your problem.
So, I propose to reinvent the wheel of the Counter class from the collections module (partially at least):
class MyDict(dict):
def __add__(self, oth):
r = self.copy()
try:
for key, val in oth.items():
if key in r:
r[key] += val # You can custom it here
else:
r[key] = val
except AttributeError: # In case oth isn't a dict
return NotImplemented # The convention when a case isn't handled
return r
a = MyDict({'a':1, 'b':2, 'c':3})
b = MyDict({'b':3, 'c':4, 'd':5})
print(a+b) # Output {'a':1, 'b': 5, 'c': 7, 'd': 5}
There would probably others way to implement that and there are already tools to do that but it's always nice to visualize how things would basically works.