Positioning an animal companion

[Grandlounge]

This came up in a game recently.

Do you need to push an animal companion to have it move to a space?

There is no trick for this, however lots of the tricks presume you can tell an animal to go to a specific location and perform a specific task such as build structure, defend, get help, guide, seek or watch.

How do you get an animal companion to take a position that is not covered by heel, defend, or come (which you only need to use if they would not be will go to those location) such as go over there.

Is this covered by Perform followed by stay?

Quote:

Perform (DC 15) The animal performs a variety of simple tricks, such as sitting up, rolling over, roaring or barking, and so on.

Is it like come and heel which an animal may do naturally unless the request is dangerous?

[William Werminster]

Handle Animal wrote:

Teach an Animal a Trick: You can teach an animal a specific trick with 1 week of work and a successful Handle Animal check against the indicated DC. An animal with an Intelligence score of 1 can learn a maximum of three tricks, while an animal with an Intelligence score of 2 can learn a maximum of six tricks. Possible tricks (and their associated DCs) include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following.

You just need to talk to your GM and set the DC to learn the trick.

[Grandlounge]

Came up in PFS.

[Starglim]

Seek, followed by down, stay or guard, seems to cover moving into a specified area. I'd count directing an animal to a specific square, or other tactical movement whose reason is not obvious to the animal, as perform or a push.

[Zarius]

Seek (DC 15) The animal moves into an area and looks around for anything that is obviously alive or animate.

Deliver (DC 15): The animal takes an object (one you or an ally gives it, or one that it recovers with the fetch trick) to a place or person you indicate. If you indicate a place, the animal drops the item and returns to you. If you indicate a person, the animal stays adjacent to the person until the item is taken. (Retrieving an item from an animal using the deliver trick is a move action.)

Menace (DC 20): A menacing animal attempts to keep a creature you indicate from moving. It does its best to dissuade the target, but it attacks only if the target attempts to move from its present location or take any significant action (particularly a hostile-seeming action). As soon as the target stops moving, the animal ceases attacking but it continues to menace. Source: PZO1140

Fetch (DC 15): The animal goes and gets something. If you do not point out a specific item, the animal fetches a random object. Source: PZO1140

Attack (DC 20) The animal attacks apparent enemies. You may point to a particular creature that you wish the animal to attack, and it will comply if able. Normally, an animal will attack only humanoids, monstrous humanoids, giants, or other animals. Teaching an animal to attack all creatures (including such unnatural creatures as undead and aberrations) counts as two tricks.

All of these tricks involve the animal moving. Per the rules strictly as written, simply getting a creature to move from one place to another is not something it can do by verbal commands without a Push, or without being able to understand language. Per RAW, if you want to be able to do that, put a point into Int next time you get a stat point for your companion.

[Grandlounge]

Perform could cover 'run' or 'go' a relatively simple command followed by stay. But RAW it seems it is easier to teach a bird to drop bombs accurately then it is to get a dog to run in a direction.