Dawnguard allows you to recruit an Armored Troll as an animal companion.
The Troll costs 500 Gold to recruit, but when I attempt to purchase the troll, the game tells me I already have an animal companion. What steps should I take to ensure I don't already have an animal companion and successfully recruit the Armored Troll?
This is for the Xbox-360 version.
Best Answer
You can wait for 3 days and see if the game dismisses your previous pet. However, the game may have messed up and may continue to think that you still have an animal follower with you (or it may be stuck somewhere). This is the case for the stray dog will wait indefinitely if you command it to and cannot follow you again after 3 days.
To solve this, open the console and type:
*Kudos to Dyflinn432 for posting this fix here
UPDATE: If you don't have access to the Skyrim console, you can try the following trick which utilizes this bug:
Note that it will probably work if you skip steps (3) and (4). I included them because the original fix creator, Novoc at Gamefaqs, posted them.