Critter handing rules, How to make characters and NPCs who can handle animals Options

[rob]

I'd like to explore how you could make a character (or NPC) who can handle animals, or how to estimate the financial burden on an individual or organization for having some sort of critters as security.

As far as I can tell, game-mechanic wise, there are a bunch of open questions:

1. Where are the rules for tests in interacting with critters? Do they exist?
2. How much do critters cost?
3. How are critters maintained?

In approaching this, I've been working with a character who is basically a former lone-star para-K9 handler (specifically, a Barghest trainer). Questions that have arisen in my test case are:

What skills should I buy? I've looked through the social skills, reasonable assumptions (a Medicine (veterinary) specialization, etc.), etc. I have come to three ideas:
1) an Animal Handling (specialized by critter type) skill, or even more specialized (Animal handling, separate skill per critter type or big grouping, like "exotic melee weapon").
2) Subspecializations of every charisma-linked skills for interacting with animals
3) A variation of the influence skill group, for critters.

I have no immediate idea on how to price critters, nor how to buy critters with alternate stats or train additional 'tricks.'

For maintenance, I assume something on the basis of additional lifestyle costs for critters, with something like a percentage of human lifestyle costs roughly equal to 5% times body (i.e., a barghest, at body 7, would cost 45% of what a human would, a hellhound 20%), based on the character's lifestyle (maybe arbitrarily capped at "Medium", since only a wierdo would treat a barghest like a luxury pet like a chihuahua).