I use followers, usually named fighters, archers, and dancers rather than animal pets, but would affect animal pets as well. Followers routinely move to the mob coordinates after a fight… the only way they do that is the now ‘dead mobs’ coordinates are entered to the data somewhere…
If the follower picks this coordinate up and moves to that spot… why can’t a programmable user input be set up both globally (all followers) and uniquely (each individual follower) or even by “type”… Setting followers to move to a predetermined position would keep them out of my line of fire, and add to the strategy.
Archers set to “range” fight at 20m behind me and 15 degrees to my left based on my location and direction I’m facing. Fighters set to melee take position 5 meters in front of me, 100 degrees to my right (not directly behind), and facing the direction of my current target (or 180 degrees off from assigned position or the reciprocal of the angle I’m facing) Ya know, almost like “stra-ge-dy” 
Programming that is just a matter of adding values in a few fields to values for coordinates and facing angles that are already SOMEWHERE in game… a good programmer will likely have it half figured out by the time they finish reading my suggestion and can likely be testing the routine before the end of the day.
Design of the user interface… is likely to be the challenge. I suggest a top-down circle map. ;-D