Good topic! 
There are a lot of pets in Faded. Carter, the MC, picks up a fantastical bug-like creature called a criet that "adopts" him and follows him around. (For the record, Carter's criet is orange and sings the note of C. ) Arc, a secondary character, has a talking dragon that is a cross between pet, coworker, and best friend. One of my bad guys owns wolf-like dogs (they need development) that are for both work and companionship.
Criet comes into the story because Carter is looking for criet silk. As he follows Carter around, the little bug adds some heart and joy, a bit of companionship. Carter feels the loss pretty deeply when, during the darkest hour, my bad guy feeds Criet to one of his wolf-like dogs. 
The dragon, being a talking creature, serves as a secondary character and comic relief. 
The primary function of the wolves is to indicate the bad guy's presence. Early on, Carter is attacked by the dogs. It's not until later that he figures out who owns them and puts the pieces together.
Faded has a pretty high concentration of pets, because it fits with the world. Some of my other stories don't have any, or only lightly developed ones. (For example, in Alaidia, most of the MCs will probably have horses with names. But while the horses will be used, they don't play a major role in the story.) I have two feature scripts with significant references to pets. In My Pet Dragon, the MC finds a dragon egg (in modern-day America) and wants to keep it as a pet. In Child, I develop the family dog pretty well, who attends them on their adventures.
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Do any of your characters have pets (dogs, horses, cats, fantastical animals that only exist in your world...rocks, etc.) that they are close to and you sort of keep throughout the book? What role do these animals play in character development, plot, etc.? If your characters don't have pets...why not?
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lol