Pet Healing

I'm sure i'm not the only one who remembers the problems Hunters used to have with pets pre-TBC and even pre-WotLK, with pet healing.

When I'm solo'ing mobs or quests, my pet rarely ever dies, because my own pet healing skills are enough to keep him up against anything but multiple elites.

However, stick my pet, especially my cat, in a party / raid with bosses doing AOE, and my focus on the bosses HP bar, and my cooldowns, and my pet can rapidly find itself runnign out of HP.
I cast a heal whenever I notice my pets HP dropping, or even recall it from combat to give me a bit of time to regen it, but there's no way I could keep it alive all on my own.

In previous raids and party groups the policy has always been "The Hunters pet, is the Hunters problem" but this doesn't ring true since WotLK. My pet obviously shouldn't take healing priority over a real player... but it does count for alot of DPS. Usually around 700. This is about the same as some non-raid-geared level 80's.
It also saves squishies when I send it in to get the aggro off them, rather than pulling it myself. And in some encounters, like Gluth, it's great to send it in to attack the boss, while I concentrate on kiting an army of undead. So the boss still gets the 700 DPS, over a 5 minute fight, that adds up to an extra 210k dmg. Not earth shattering, but helpful non the less.
My pets crits also buff the entire raid with extra dmg, so overall, it's effect is very useful. And keeping them up is reccomended.

I'm not trying to sing the praises of my pets here, although they are extremely useful.
I'm just trying to say "Thanks" to the healers who keep them alive in Raids. As an ex-healer myself, your helpfulness has been noticed.

Oh, but to the tanks, when tanking Heigan, pull him a little bit more across the line of the waves, because my pet always attacks from the back, so usually I have to keep him at my side for that fight, or he just dies straight away which lowers my DPS.
The raiders last night pulled him just a little bit further in on each wave, which meant I could send my pet in, for all-out DPS, and Heigan went down after only 2 dances.