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.
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:
set playeranimalcount to 0
*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:
Occasionally after killing the chief, rieklings still won't be available as followers. Despite the rieklings not taking up the humanoid follower slot, this bug may be circumvented by dismissing your humanoid follower and recruiting them again after recruiting the riekling.
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.
This is a glitch I'm afraid. Go find meeko if you've never had a follower then immediately fire him. You should then after be able to recruit the armored troll. Alternatively you need to find what ever follower you may have told to wait.
it also can be that you have an invisible companion. I had the same problem as you but when I turned into a werewolf I saw a ghostly like dog next to me. I killed him and then I could buy dogs and trolls again
If it is telling you that you already have an animal follower then check any places you could possibly have made it wait. If you find it and still cant recruit the troll after sending it away, kill it. And If it still doesnt work after that then you have some form of follower glitch and should check into that.
Note It is possible the dog from the clavicus vile daedra quest could be taking up this spot if you have that quest in an unfinished state.
I realise you have already attempted to do so with the troll itself, yet perhaps simply befriending/recruiting another dog shall cancel your current companion (whatever it may be). Once done so, you could simply inform the canine to be off, stating 'I think we should part ways' or something along those lines. In the case of that not working, there is one alternative: kill the dog itself. Furthermore, simply check over your home once more even if you have done so already, as it may well have been faulted.
As previously mentioned, I realise you have already attempted this yet I see no harm in trying as I recollect similar actions paying dividends to me in the past.
If your wishes are still yet to come to fruition, I simply suggest that you perhaps trawl through the miscellaneous information
