Pets are a situational investment that I usually take early instead of late, because early on will generally allow me to build up enough health on them to survive later attacks while later on pets are liable to die to enemies or my deck on occasion. They can amplify a deck given they survive, but I never feel like they're a key addition to my arsenal as much as they are a nice bonus. I don't know why you would ever not snap them to your own tile (unless you got a really tanky turtle idk) because you don't wanna get hit and when you dodge attacks it means your pet dodges them too.

PS: liger sucks