You can only have one pet (active) with you all the time. Dismissing it merely sends it away, you do not get rid of it.

There are two ways of getting more it:

1. If you want to keep your existing pet, go to a town and find a stable master. Stable your pet and then go tame the new pet. Anytime you want to change your pet, you can return to the stable master. You can purchase additional stable slots as well.

2. If you do not want to waste time running back to look for a stable master, right click on your pet icon and select abandon. You would not get back your old pet this way. The pet is discarded forever.

I suggest learning about stable master now because you will need to change pets quite often in the game to learn new skills to teach your pet.

Stable master is your best friend then

They get training points as they level up and kill more stuff.

Actually, it is not really stealing. That is the only way to learn new skills. Some skills are exclusive to certain pets only.

Bite, Claw, Growl are some of the skills that can be learned by all. To get higher level of the skills, you need to tame different pets to learn that skill.

Charge is for boar only, Dive is for owl and bat (i think), and stealth are only for cats.

To get new skills, tame the pet, use the pet until you get a msg saying "You have learn XYXYX skill"

Then go to your Power/Skills screen, there is one skill for training your pet.

Do not dismiss your pet, that reduces happiness by 50%. Feed it whenever it is unhappy. Do not let it die alot.

Always keep the pet in Green status for the happiness.