Mini Pets?

I took a little break from GW for some other game, and am now out of the loop.

Can anyone give me some info on the minipets. Someone ingame told me that you get one after your character is 1 year old...is that true? I also saw here on GWG that you can buy them...

So I guess my questions would be

Where/How do you get a minipet?
Can you have more than one? Do you get one per account or one per character?
Do they do anything? (other than the obvious of status/looking cool, funny)

thanks for any help

one per character when it reaches 1 year of age (not the account).

what you get is random.

they can be bought sold or traded.

no use except the cute factor.
of course my CE mini dragon is fun

at one year a nicely wrapped birthday present appears in inventory and you simply double click and see what you got

EDIT

you can have as many as you can afford

Thanks much

Also while you can posses more than one, you can only have one active at a time.