Animal Companions in Shadowrun 4th Edition

I just wanted to know if it's possible to have a companion similar to the animal companions in D&D in 4th edition of Shadowrun. I've been playing D&D with my friends IRL for a while now and I loved the animal companion mechanic in D&D and Pathfinder, so when I found out about the Animal Empathy quality. So I was wondering if there was a way to use that in conjunction with an animal companion. I was also wondering if it was a regular animal companion could it be more battle appropriate with cybernetic implants or if you could have a magical animal like a hellhound or something instead. Could that be a thing, and could someone work with me on working out the kinks?

It's definitely possible. First option is a normal pet (my troll had a couple rottweilers in his junkyard safehouse, for example), which is by far the simplest. Just buy it and train it. Second option is cybernetics. In Shadowrun, you can put behaviour-control chips in animals or build animal-drone hybrids with sufficient skill investment and appropriate materials. By 2070 it should be quite possible to buy such as well. Note that anything relying on a magical field for its existence is going to die miserably if you put cybernetics into it, so this only works on natural critters. Third option is using magic. Either compulsion/control spells to train a critter (which can be highly dangerous, especially if it's a hellhound. Don't try and train a hellhound as a squishy mage. You'll die.) or via a perk in the core rules that makes you interesting to spirits. Talk to your GM about having a minor spirit as a sort of familiar in that case. Rules-wise, such would be a "contact" with maximum loyalty.