A Few Questions/Points on Ranger Pets

Ok, I posted in both Q&A and Bugs forum, and with over 100 people looking at my threads nobody had a comment. Basically I used the death leveling method to level 2 lions before charming and one crocodile (to levels 15,16,and 20 respectively).
In all 3 cases, the pet never got an evolution, which both threads here and on guildwiki never mentioned as a possible side effect to this method of leveling. Obviously without a prefix, it is assumed the pets have the same stats as Elder evolution.
Here's the problem, for aesthetic(spelling?) reasons, I would like my pet to be either (preferably) dire or hearty because both of those evolutions would increase my pet's size (there are a few exceptions to the "growing" rule but both the lion and croc are confirmed to get larger when they evolve).

Now for the question part, what are people's opinions on the issue?

Should I keep death levelling and throw out ones that won't evolve, or should I assume they will never evolve by death levelling and charm a pet that's level 5 and train it up the slow way?

Just charm a baby and level it. If all you want is hearty, the pet can even be dead and still be gaining XP.

Yes. Hearty is easy to get. Just take it out on a few farming trips and let it die.

Dire is usually the only reason people go through the trouble of death leveling for.

I don't believe dire pets get nearly as big as hearty ones, though, if that means anything to you.

Also, as for which pets grow as they level, no pets in Factions (lazy bastards) grow, while all Prophesies and Nightfall pets do.

No, they don't. Dire pets are normal size. Only hearty pets are ginormous.

I thought that might be true, but I wasn't sure enough to say. Dires don't grow at all, huh?

I'm very proud to be the companion of Redfeather, the Largest Moa in the World(tm). My secret? Feed your pet dwarves. They're good for their bones. ^_^

Hmm, seems to me, you just forgot to charm it...
the pet wont show the evolution until its both charmed AND /petname'd to reset.
Death levelling *never* fails to produce aggressive/dire pets.

i wish that were the case, but after i levelled them, i charmed them, reset names, went in and out of outposts, and so forth. so unless lions and crocodiles don't get prefixes, something went wrong. ah well, i tamed a level 5 lion and i'll just raise it hearty i suppose

Actually that isnt true. I death leveled a warthog for a Acolyte Jin and it grew as it approached dire.

Actually from my memory Tyrian pets grow if they are at either end of the extreme (hearty or dire) while elder pets don't grow at all (I have a 'large as a hearty' Dire Wolf for example). Pet's from Factions don't grow. Not sure about Nightfall. Though I have seen a few 'large' lions owned by guildies...

yeah my lion's definitely larger now, and he's just at the playful stage. i have a screenie of him next to me when i first charmed him, once i take one of him now and at his hearty stage i'll post all 3. this kinda confirms that the death levelling doesn't always function since the other 2 lions i death levelled to 15and 16 never evolved once. and again, i tried all possible methods to get their prefix to reset, and when i reset their names it always reset to plain old "lion"