I remember this, but its not working now, I read about that somewhere being changed due to patch used. shame, that was a good skill, but the striders were not fun animals to have for me.
I did remind myself after seeing the results of my little test above, that there is a reason I can’t stand wolves.
I feel like I have fleas now.
I’m only 22 as a Classic Horde hunter. I can’t afford 5 gold for the last Stable slot, so I only have 2 pets: 1 stabled, 1 active.
Hunter learns pet skills, then teaches pet. Most pet types can only learn 2-4 skills (plus all the trainer skills). To get higher levels, you have to go train that skill, learn it quickly, release the pet, then train your regular pet in it. So…one main pet, one slot for discardable pets for learning new skills. Bummer, only one?
Feed pet (I have it on a key next to my backpack) does 10 casts on pet. Takes about half a minute. You and pet can move during it. I don’t notice the colors: I keep my pet smiley.
yeah the 5 gold is a hard hit, lol, just got mine when I did that feed test a few hours ago.
So if I’m reading this right, you are feeding your pet TEN TIMES when you feed it? Ten pieces of food, or am I reading that wrong?
If its ten pieces of food, you will never have that five gold, cause it’s overkill big time.
if so, see what my test shows for how much it gets off one feed. 
Dismissing a pet also reduces its happiness. If you’re going to be AFK that long, just log out.
I can’t afford the 5 gold either. So you can only have one pet. At certain levels you will need to learn higher ranking pet abilities to teach your pet. Each pet has some abilities you need to learn. For example bat, bear, boar etc at level 16 you need to learn bite 3, at level 24 you need to learn bite 4, and so on until you learn bite 8 at 56. Growl and a few other abilites you can learn from trainers but some must be learned from other beasts. If you don’t learn them you’re seriously nerfing your pet’s dps. Just as if you didn’t learn Arcane shot level 2, 3, 4.
You have to put all your pets in the stable. You have to find a pet that knows the higher level ability. Petopia will tell you where it is. You have to tame that pet and play with it a while. When you learn the ability you can abandon it and teach it to your pet. How fast you learn it is random but it never took me more than 5 minutes.
You will have to abandon one of your pets soon or pay the 5 gold for the extra stable slot. And you’ll have to leave one slot empty until you get to about 60 so you can learn the higher ranking abilites.
When I was 24 I needed to learn Charge 3 for my boar. I had to take the zep to STV. Swim out to the fatigue line and swim north to Westfall. If I got to close to the shore the level?? mobs would aggro and one shot me. Then I ran across Westfall to Redridge to tame a bore named Bullygrub that knew charge 3. There are a few other boars that knew the ability but that was the easiest way for me to learn it.
It’s just one more example of retail just giving you things and classic making you work for them. I find that fun. Other people think it’s a tedious waste of time.
but it does occur in roughly the same time frame as I mentioned. I also stated I was unclear of specifics.
While leveling I heard over chat that some pets were abandoning hunters even though they claimed the pet displayed it was happy.
The problem might be with certain addons some might be using that give a false reading on happiness. Either way, it is possible for a pet to abandon its owner at lower levels rather quickly. Maybe they get hungry a lot more as you stated, but they can abandon in as little as ten minutes of inactivity (the time period it sometimes takes to get in between some quest at low level without aspect). Maybe the problem is people not paying attention, low quality of food, or the inability to build up enough loyalty, etc.
It never happened to me either but after I heard some pets were abandoning owners, I
regularly kept pet dismissed until needed until pet was around level 25.
The moral of the story for noob hunters is to pay close attention to pet, since your first pet is likely going to be level 5-10. It can abandon you.
Some things that may have not been stated.
-Middle mouse on spells on pet bar toggle auto use for your pet
-You need to tame other pets to learn new ranks/spells. You use the new tamed pet until you see the new rank/spell in your pet training spell book.
-Growl is always free and learnable (don’t keep it on in dungeons unless you need to)
You forgot to mention the details on Bite 8 tho.
I believe it can only be learned after taming a worg in LBRS…which can be an exceptionally difficult group to form or get into. You would think the opposite with so much BIS dropping in the Spires, right?
It’s not so simple to learn Bite 8 in other words. I would have said “it’s possible to learn Bite 8” instead of making it sound like one could tame any old tiger in Winterspring. Noobs don’t know this stuff. The OP was asking if pets take up a space in his bag or on a game bar (inferred). He will certainly be asking in trade chat one day because he cannot find a beast with Bite 8 anywhere.
I think the only time I have ever used dismiss is before jumping in a dungeon. It’s better to tell your pet to “stay”. Then run away far enuf that it disappears. Then do your banking , auctioning, chatting in town etc. When your ready to actually USE the pet again give it a whistle. I’ll use this tactic before going on a long journey by foot.
My classic hunter is only 32. I did a lot of this 15 years ago on my retail hunter but I only remember the basics, not all the details. I could have gotten charge 3 in RFK but like you said, it’s tough to find a group that will take the time to allow you to tame a pet. Of course if you’re horde on a pvp server you couldn’t do it the way I did. There’s no way you could run through those alliance controlled areas and live. A lot of the abilities have these difficult paths to learn them if you want to get them as soon as you’re the proper level.