Death leveling a dire pet for hero

Is it possible to get a dire pet for a hero without giving up your pet?

Here is the problem I am running into.
1) I find the pet I want and clear the area around it.
2) I set the heroes to passive with self-heals and Resurrection and flag their position so they don't wander off trying to avoid the animal. (I had many problems where I find my party died and at the rez shrine probably because they ran off somewhere and aggroed other mobs).
3) I take off my armor and get my health and armor as low as possible and equip a vampiric weapon.
4) I select the animal and attack it. It turns red.
5) I let the animal kill me a bunch of times until it's at least level 15. (Should I be able to see the evolution as Dire X or not because I currently don't?)
6) I tell my hero to use Charm Animal but she doesn't. I assume because there is no friendly animal to charm.

Something else that I tried was to make the hero use Charm Animal instead of step 4. The problem is that it succeeds because I don't know how to cancel a hero action. Then, I tried giving a vampiric weapon to the hero and bring her health down to less than 20, then use Charm Animal. I believe she died before it completed, but somehow the pet was still charmed.

So my question is how do you get a dire pet for a hero, especially without giving up your pet in the process (because I don't want to try to use Charm Animal to try to tame the pet, cancel it, then let the hero try).

1. REALLY clear the area...all around the radar and all patrols.
2. You don't have to set them to passive if you take away their weapons...they tend to run around less that way.
3. have your heroes only equipped with Rebirth for low health rez, so you die faster.
4. good
5. You won't see "Dire" until after animal is charmed and you leave/reload a map from town or outpost.
6. If your hero is set to passive, they will avoid "combat"...make them aggresive to use the spell.

Thanks for the reply. It looks like my problem was that I didn't take away the weapon from my hero and then I didn't change to Aggressive to force the spell to be cast.

Edit: Actually, my real problem was that I didn't select the pet. The hero didn't start casting the spell until I actually selected my target. Oh, and Rebirth and Resurrection both rez at 25%. I ended up using Signet of Return. Also an extra superior rune would have put me over the top so I instantly die upon rezzing (supposedly it doesn't matter if the pet is not the one killing you), but I had time and didn't want to spend the extra gold.

should just be able to click the spell and the hero will perform that spell next.

I did it the easy way: i charmed a dire Black Widow for one of my ranger heroes