Pathfinder 1E Sending Animal Companion to "Retrieve" Companion

[Clyde Lee Graham]

If the animal knows the fetch trick, done. If not, that'd be pushing the animal and a Handle Animal roll that the PC is likely to make if they haven't dumped CHA or failed to spend points on Handle Animal.

The player could then choose to resist or not, much like you can choose to drop your Spell Resistance. If he resisted, yeah, grapple kind of makes sense.

I'm on the fence as to whether this would provoke an AoO, and if so, whether the bad guy would get to swing at the animal or the PC being fetched,

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

"Fetch". Failing that, "sic balls!"

 

[Sunseeker]

If she controlled the player, why couldn't she simply have them retreat? Were they downed? If so, then the downed player is unconscious and therefore helpless. No grapple check would be needed. At best I'd say a handle animal check(as a standard) to make sure sure the pet understands the command(and doesn't rip the guy's foot off or something), then just execute the move with the animal's available actions. Move to reach the guy, standard to pick them up, end turn, then moves to get out, if the character is heavy enough to make encumbrance matter, deal with it, but honestly I wouldn't bother with it. It's taking up far too much time to accomplish something so simple already.

And apply AOO if necessary, but only if the guy is really in the thick of combat. If the enemy is otherwise engaged and the leopard is more or less running through open space within the battle, I'd just go through the actions and get it done with.

Honestly if there was a lot going on, I might agree with "you do it" for simplicity's sake, especially since the player in question controls all friendly actors(character, pet, other PC) in the situation