I’ll follow up with more details and what I have tried to resolve this, but basically, none of my Hunter Pets on this character have their Family, Special, or Bonus abilities in the Pet tab of the Spellbook right now to use.
They did retain Spec and Basic abilities, however.
Additionally, their Special, Family and Bonus abilities are listed in the Stable UI, but they are not there to use in the Spellbook. My reading online suggests that by level 19, these abilities should have become available some time ago (few, if any later than level 14, most at level 1).
To try and resolve this, I have tamed new pets, changed specs multiple times, restarted the game multiple times, all to no avail. I strongly disbelieve it to be a UI issue, as other Hunter characters of mine are unaffected.
Here is a little background/details of some possible things that, from my perspective, could have led to this happening.
I hadn’t logged on to this character for a while and noticed he had a Gear Update available. I opted to use it, including switching specs from Marksmanship to Beast Mastery.
When I tried to log in, the loading bar filled and I could hear in-game sounds, but something went wrong because it was still on the loading screen. After giving it several minutes, I opted to force close the game.
Upon relaunching the game, I was able to log in fine and went along my way with re-configuring action bars and such.
I did notice one oddity at this point - I was BM, had Animal Companion auto-talented in, and one of my pets that I had not yet slotted into the Animal Companion slot in the Stables was already functioning in that role. If I switched to the other active pet, it auto-switched the other one to Animal Companion - this is not normal functionality for Animal Companion.
Later, while glancing through my the Pet tab of my Spellbook is when I noticed the unexpected behavior - I was looking for Growl to place in the Pet Action Bar (for visibility of auto-cast toggle) and couldn’t find the usual Family Ability that should be there.
Lastly, I know the timing of this happening is awful, right after a patch, so don’t worry too much about it since I imagine it’s a (very) rare scenario that led to it. I (clearly) haven’t played the alt a ton, but in case I do in the future, I would like my pets to be fully functional. Eventually. 