Why can't I take an animal follower?

Question

I am a vampire lord and have no followers to speak of besides Lydia who stays in my Breezehome in Whiterun, however I want Vigilance as my follower animal because he's very loyal and has an average attack damage.

But whenever I ask the stablesmans son, he always says, "You already have an animal with you," And I freaking have no animals!

Maybe I have a pet left at Lakeview Manor?

So I went back there and no pets.

Does it count kids as pets?

Please help, this is stressing me out because I cannot get a Death Hound either.

Answer 1

Try using the following console command:

set playerfollowercount to 0

If that doesn't work, try reinstalling all follower mods (if you have any).

Answer 2

You should be using the 'activate' button on your controller/keyboard. You should have a choice to make him follow you. And yes, you can have Lydia and Vigilance at the same time (but if you're still doing 'A Daedra's Best Friend', Barbas might count as a pet.

Answer 3

You could try waiting a few days (in game) to make the game can reset anything it needs to, your computer/console may be trying to run to many small things at once and it may need a little help. Also try going through a few different cells to give it a few loading screens to process data

Answer 4

There is a bug that you cant get the follower dialog for pets to recruit them but there is a quiete simple fix. So you should try to dismiss your current human follower and then talk to the pet you want to adopt. The "follow me" dialog should now be available. This can happen if for some reason your human follower takes also up the spot for your pet follower (spaghetti code).

The other way around (getting human follower while already having a pet with you) should be no problem.

Answer 5

If you're having an issue with gaining an animal follower, make absolutely certain you have completed any quest with an animal follower or that you haven't accidentally left one behind, elsewhere in a previous quest.

Dogs (specifically adopted dogs) in Skyrim have a known bug which may also create your issue:

...Certain dogs can also be recruited as potential followers throughout the game. You can have at most one canine follower at any time. If your dog is left waiting for too long, a message will appear stating that it has grown tired of waiting and will start walking to their original location...

...A dog companion told to go home will go home to its own original home, or your first encounter area, not any of your homes. This appears to have been the intended behavior, unless it was adopted by your children...

If a dog follower gets adopted by your children, it may wander off to the wrong house. This seems to happen when dismissed outdoors and when your family lives in one of the three homes added by Hearthfire. It may also happen if the dog is already adopted and you move the family to one of the Hearthfire homes.

To resolve this, find the dog and ask it to follow you, walk home, go indoors, and tell it to wait there. Even after two game days pass, it will still be there. Dismissing the dog in the house might also work.

PC users can find the dog by using the console command player.moveto <dog id>, but even without it you should find the dog wandering around near one of the other homes.

-UESP SKYRIM:DOGS#BUGS

The above fix however, is for the PC version.

You may fix the issue on console in a more tedious fashion by going back and retracing steps to locate a forgotten or stuck animal.

Another fix is the trick to wait X days (typically three). Followers often consider this time frame "too long" to wait around and automatically leave to whence they came. This doesn't always work but is the least tedious method of attempting to fix the issue.