Game Mechanics: Magician pets should not dual wield, or equip weapons before January 2000 patch era

[DMN]

I wonder what the deal was with enchanter animations. Heavily suggests that they could not take weapons either.

I almost never used them back in the day and certainly wouldn't waste fine steel to weaponize them. I know eventually you could get them to DW post kunark. I suspect they were stealth patched along with magicians in this patch , but they didn't want to upset the quite vociferous mages.