low level pet skillsFollow

I have a hunter alt that I've played when I just wanted to zone out and farm. I ground her up all the way to 70 on skinnable mobs, I think I might have completed 5 quests overall. Anyway, one thing I did with her was to pick up three special lowbie pets: the Springpaw cub, the barking wolf, and Arikara.

Now that I'm at 70, I figure I'll just keep using her as a farmbot, since my main on the server is a healer. However, should I ever decide to run heroics or raid eventually, will the lowbie pet skills gimp me overmuch? I would really rather not have to abandon any of them, learn the highest skills, and then re-tame and re-level them to 70.

I got Claw rank 4, Bite rank 5, and LB rank 3 before taming Arikara and filling out my last stable slot. Given that this girl will never be my main raiding toon, can I skate by with these?

You're wrong on that ;-). You have to learn the higher rank skill from pets the same as the lower rank skill. The good side though is you don't have to learn the intermediate ranks. In other words if you have claw rank 3 and you and your pet are level 70 you can skip the middle ranks 4,5,6 and just go straight to the highest rank claw (I think it 7 maybe 9, I dunno I hate cats I'm a windserpent fan).

Yup, you have to learn each level of a pet learned skill from a pet. For example learning 'Claw 1' from an animal does not magically make higher ranks available from trainers. Petopia has a page where you can easily find all the pets that know a particular skill. That way you can look for the ones closest to your current location or low enough level for your hunter to tame and go get it.
http://petopia.brashendeavors.net/html/skills/skills.php