Frightened Animals and Command an Animal

[FunkamusPrime]

If an animal is not combat-trained, it becomes panicked at the start of combat (Frightened 4 and Fleeing). The core rulebook says, "If you successfully Command your Animal using Nature (page 249), you can keep it from fleeing, though this doesn’t remove its frightened condition."

Does this mean if the player uses Command an Animal for any reason with the animal, it stops fleeing?

For example, a player has a frightened dog and wants to command it to stride to a certain location. Do they spend one action and use Command an Animal once and the dog stops fleeing and strides as commanded... or does the player need to use one action to Command the dog to not flee, and then a second action to Command the dog to stride to the desired location?

And how long does the animal not flee? It says, "keep it from fleeing", not "removes the fleeing condition", so would the animal then try and flee on the next round if not Commanded again?

[Laran]

The way that I read the rules, you command the animal and it stops fleeing but remains frightened. The stopping it from fleeing is 1 action. Since it is probably not a minion, you use 1 action to keep from fleeing and then 1 action to stride. The rule says it keeps fleeing as long as it has the frightened condition and the command animal does not remove the fleeing condition (it only stops it). It is unclear whether the command animal check removes the fleeing condition, if not then the next round it still has the frightened condition so you need to keep it from fleeing then 1 action to stride.

Rule from CRB: "When combat begins, they become frightened
4 and fleeing as long as they’re frightened. If you
successfully Command your Animal ... you can keep it from fleeing, though this doesn’t remove its frightened condition."

[beowulf99]

It sounds to me like you would need to command the animal to stop it's flight every round until it's Frightened 4 condition is reduced to 0, so 4 turns later. If the creature is attacked, it goes back to frightened 4.

This sounds reasonable to me. A horse isn't going to stare down an ogre for you if you haven't trained it to. It's gonna run, and it's gonna keep trying to run until the ogre is gone or the horse has gotten far enough away.

[Laran]

Giving the OP's original questions some more thought. The questions are:
1) Is the fleeing condition is stopped as a side effect of a successful other Command such as Stride or does stopping the fleeing condition require a separate Command specific to stop fleeing
2) Does it require a new check every round to stop the fleeing

My original interpretation was that it would require a separate command to stop it from fleeing. The specific command would be the "stand" command.

However, I can see the interpretation and rationale that if you command the animal to stride (or strike), you overcome the animal's current fleeing condition.

There is nowhere in the rules which I can find that says which interpretation is correct. The Stand command appears to be the equivalent of the old Stay command so that is not explicit.

After giving it the additional consideration, I am changing my opinion and would tend to be lenient and say that if you successfully Command (with the penalties of frightened) an animal, it would overcome the fleeing condition as a side effect of the command. This is just my opinion since the rules do not seem to be explicit