hey guys, thanks for all the great suggestions (and sorry about misspelling "y'all"). To clarify, the PCs won't be fighting this ranger; he's going to be an on-again-off-again ally (and a potential love interest for one of the female characters). House-ruling the ranger class as a whole is not really something I want to do at this point, I just want to make it so that his extra-powerful animal is not going to make him outshine the rest of the group in combat. However, it is pretty critical to the ranger's character and role in the story that he be a ranger. I want him to have a very loyal and special dog as a friend, but I want the dog to be capable and sturdy in combat because the basic ranger companion is pretty much, like people said and like it says in the rulebook, a scout and possibly a flanker. Thank you for the Wild Cohort suggestion; I've never heard of that before (noob, I know) but it'll definitely make the group's fighter happy (she always wanted an animal companion). I think I'm going to just go ahead and drop the spellcasting and give him full animal progression, and let him keep his combat style, but I'm going to limit the special powers the animal gets - no evasion or improved evasion, no shared spells (obviously, since he can't cast spells), and no alternative animal selection. Thanks for the suggestions, guys