I think Find Familiar and Animal Friendship were built into the class, since spell lists were pretty tightly coupled to class back in the day - maybe the ramifications of the latter weren't thought through too carefully.
But, yeah, homunculus, Golems, flying mounts & magic items weren't even in the PH, were hardly even alluded to in it.
But there was a lot of potential for 'pets' in the classic game … and, there were Henchmen & Hirelings. My old 1e Druid character had a veritable menagerie, and a pretty complete NPC adventuring party following him around. CHA's good for something, even back in the day.
There was even a pretty clear assumption that players would make fiendish use of Henchmen & Hirelings, and lots of DM advice how to handle it.
Maybe it was always problematic, but with the WotC era, it seems like there's more worry over the balance impact of such things. The controversy over the Druids animal companion supposedly rivaling the party fighter, for instance, or the harsh restrictions on pet/summon actions in 4e/E, or the current 5e take on the 'beastmaster…'