Out of curiosity: I'm thinking of getting the game in january and I'll most likely play a hunter (cos that's what I played in the last stress and it was lots of fun); did they add any new pet skills? There was just Claw, Bite and Cower (and Growl ) last time I checked, even though the creature you were fighting seemed to have other skills, those were the only ones you could get.
It was also a bit annoying to have to tame other pets to get the additional skills that your current one didn't have. Is that still how it works?
EDIT: All you have is a taming rod?
Er... I'm not sure if they changed it for retail (I doubt they have), but you need to complete the pet quests if all you have is the training rod. When you receive the rod, they should tell you "go capture x creature and come back to me." You'll do this 3 times, and then you'll receive the basic pet commands like feed pet and all that, and then there was another mini quest that gave you the revive pet ability.
Or something like that; anyhow, the point is that you shouldn't have the taming rod, you should have a "Tame Beast" skill.