Topic. Say I train a bird using the handle animal skill, and teach it the trick 'deliver.' I give it a message easy enough, but what's the range? Could I send it a few feet or a few miles? Line of sight or cross country? Thoughts?
I would say it could deliver your message to anywhere it's been before, but not someplace it hasn't.
Carrier pigeons were used to return messages back to a "home" base but could only go to one place.
But were talking about animal a step above other animals, so I would say it's fair to allow them to deliver the message to any place they've been before.
Animal Messenger is a 2nd level spell that lasts 1 day per level. The animal goes wherever, within the duration. That is a minimum f 3 days travel for it.
Handle Animal is not magic, so cannot do anything this good. That is the upper limit to the skill.
Animals can be trained to recognize people's names. They also can know there usual location. Telling Fido to take the "toy" to Fred should be fine provided Fred is known to reside reasonably close by. The toy can be a message in a tube that looks like a bone or some such.
On the other hand, if Fred is known to reside somewhere in the area, Fido can be told to seek Fred. However, it would take longer.
For a realistic range, I think anything in its home territory is fine. For more than a 1/2 day's travel, the animal would need to know where it is going (i.e. been there many times).
/cevah