Guide to evolving a dire pet

Introduction
A dire Animal companion is an ideal offensive weapon, it deals 15% more damage than a 'normal' pet, but on the other side it has 60 Health Points less. To evolve a pet to dire, it must learn to deal damage, but it must not get used to taking damage. So the main idea is that the Pet-Master takes all the damage while the pet kills foes.

Equipment
Use a Totem Axe or any single handed weapon Of Enchanting and a Protective Icon, possibly with +12 Energy and some Health, but no Armor bonus. Use only a Tamer's Mask of Superior Beast Mastery rune and some Gloves or Boots of Minor Expertise. Any Armor is fine, even AL 70. You will now have only 2 Pips Energy regeneration, but that's enough.

Getting to Level 15

 * Enter the Elona Reach mission
 * Cast Balthazar's Spirit on yourself
 * Talk to the priest to get the Crystal Shard and drop it immediately
 * Select yourself by pressing 'f' 
 * Do NOT aggro the two Minotaurs, else they may sneak up from behind and attack your pet
 * Run down the slope to the 'pitch', right in the group of minos. DO NOT GO BACK, else the pet will be attacked, not you. If the pet gets attacked nontheless, immediately zone out
 * Shortly before you get the first hit, activate Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond. From now on, do not move anymore. Again, your pet may get attacked if you do so
 * Use all your pet attacks, as often as possible
 * Keep up both enchantments and call of haste
 * When there are only a few minos left, you start running low on energy. Do not use anymore Pet-Attacks except Ferocious Strike, else you do not have enough Energy to keep up your enchantments.
 * When all Minos are dead, zone out and restart the mission
 * Rinse and repeat

At Level 11, the pet should do its first evolution, to Agressive. At Level 15, the second evolution should take place, to Dire.

Variants
Any Pet Attacks can be inserted in these Slots, but these mentioned above do probably the most damage.

Level 15 and On
Once your pet has evolved a second time it doesn't matter how you continue to level it up to retain its evolution. So to minimize the amount of time you spend killing minotuars to level your pet further you can use this build. With this build, retribution deals damage to not one but all of the Minotuars attacking you, which makes for a quicker battle. You will have no energy regen, but you will be constantly fed energy by being hit anyway. Just proceed as normal and once you have the aggro of all the Minotuars use your spirit of Extinction. However, make sure to throw Protective Spirit and Spirit Bond on you before you put down Edge of Extinction because Spirit Bond doesn't last long and Edge of Extinction takes a few seconds to use. Eventually the Minotuars will start falling and cause a chain reaction of deaths due to Edge of Extinction giving you a lot of experience all at once.

To minimize the amount of time even further, go killing Mountain Trolls outside Droknar's Forge. Run to the cave, and then aggro all the trolls. It does not matter if your pet gets slain by Trolls or Avicaris outside the cave. You need to cast Edge of Extinction before you aggro any Trolls because these beasts have Disrupting Chop.

To have retribution (at Smiting Prayers 12) fully working, you need 510 Health Points, so consider Symbiosis.

To get easier and faster to the cave, try Run as One.