Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

My pet loyalty stays lvl 1 no matter what, i've had it for a long time at happy status and I even tried different pets. However when zoning it says "Your pet's loyalty has increased" and you can hear the DING leveling sound. It still stays on lvl 1 though. Any ideas?

http://www.wowwiki.com/Loyalty

"... Basically, to gain a loyalty level, your pet needed to, no matter what, gain at least 5% of the XP you, the Hunter, needed for your next level. This was required even if your pet was your level (which means they weren't actually gaining the XP). But there was also a time component on every loyalty level past Unruly. For example, to get to level 4 from level 5, you not only needed the experience gain, but an hour had to pass. This, as Mania says, is why sometimes your pet would ding loyalty while you're standing around in town-- you had gained the experience, but the time had to pass as well."

I recently started a hunter and I can tell you that levels 10-14 were a huge pain in the ass. The quest for getting the pet is partially bugged, and the loyalty thing was driving me nuts. I think I fed my pet 100 times and gained like 2-3 levels before he started to stay at the 125% loyalty for extended periods of time.

Not trying to be argumentative, but I'd counter that the delicious OP carnage that your pet can wreak upon your enemies makes any and ALL acquisition headaches worth it. Hunters at early patch levels really were/are heinously well equipped with a loyal, trained up pet. Keep in mind, all you need to accomplish that is kill beasts, harvest the leather and throw you pet the meat as it comes up, and hit up some trainers which you can find in most towns/cities. You're not questing and scrounging and researching and posting on boards, you're just getting heinously powerful by playing and feeding your monster.

I mean, come on, how can you gripe when this health regenerating, manna-to-hit-point-converting, rezable, aggro holding, tactical directive following, armored, DPS machine is working tirelessly and obediently for you while YOU can feign death/disengage and lay traps, turn tail, aspect of cheetah/pack boost speed, evaporate your pet bc you're out of range and then just whistle him back before he dies... if your pet did anything else, it would play the game for you.