Chinook Bear Companion (Requires SKSE)

Chinook is a stripey polar bear cub that you save from a bandit-run animal
fighting ring (killing other captured animals in the process [you monster]).
Once you find him in Faldar's Tooth and enlist him as a follower,
he'll begin to grow and his body weight will change depending on
the amount of food you give him.

Installation

Extract the .zip file into your Skyrim Data folder, or just use NMM: no muss, no fuss.
If you haven't installed Skyrim Script Extender yet, download it here.

Uninstallation

Remove "ChinookBearCompanion.esp" from your Skyrim Data folder.

Finding Chinook

1) The cub spawns in Faldar's Tooth, a fort northwest of Riften. To get there,
take the north road out of Riften and turn left at the first intersection.
If you try to stick to the north bank of the lake while heading west from here,
you'll run right into it. Alternatively, look at the screenshot of the world map
I've left for you and go to town- or, uh, fort. Whatever.

2) When you enter the fort, head down the stairs on your left and go right through
the door at the landing. There'll be a room with a barred cell lining the left side
and one or two bandits in it. Proceed through this room.

3) You'll come to an intersection: there'll be a doorway in front of you and another
to your right. Go right. If you haven't beaten this dungeon yet, the door in front of
you will be blocked by a portcullis, which'll make your decision-making process a tad
easier.

4) You'll then pass through a corridor that leads to a room with many cages, a few
bandits, and an oil covered floor. This is where you'll find Chinook. From the room's
entrance, Chinook will be held in the first cage on the right. You'll have to either
pick the lock on the cage's door or find the key to open it somewhere in the dungeon
to reach him. Great job, chief: you've just rescued yourself a bear cub.

Features

Chinook - A bear that you can raise from a cub (nifty, eh?). If fed two to three times a day, he'll reach full maturity in about two in-game months. If you starve him, it'll take closer to six. In addition to gaining/losing weight if you over/underfeed him, his movement speed and base attack damage will change as well.
"Set Chinook's Home" - A spell that you receive when Chinook is first recruited. When cast, it will change the place that Chinook will go when dismissed to wherever you're standing. Chinook's default "home" is just within the entrance of Faldar's Tooth (though why you'd want him to go back there is anyone's guess; perhaps you're a sadist?).
"How's it going?" - A dialogue option that Chinook has when following you. He'll respond to it differently depending on his age, weight, hunger, location, etc.

Known Issues

Even after working tirelessly on this mod for several weekends, there're still some pesky quirks I can't seem to get rid of. While none of them really harm the overall functionality of the mod, they may scare the especially discriminating/OCD mod-seekers away. I've listed them here for their convenience (and also in hopes that someone competent might give me some pointers):

When using the "How's it going?" dialogue option, the subtitles that appear will occasionally pop up for a split second before returning to the root dialogue menu, rather than staying onscreen until the user clicks. This phenomenon appears to be random, and nothing I've tried in Creation Kit has fixed it thus far. It can be easily thwarted by persistence, however: just keep clicking "How's it going?" until the subtitles remain onscreen.
Due to the limitations of the interpolation technique Bethesda uses to blend two different meshes together, [I suspect] Chinook's mesh gets a bit rough on the sides when his weight value is close to 50. The flaws aren't really noticeable unless Chinook is performing the standing attack that bears use in combat. Still, it's enough of a flaw to get one's thatsnothowbearswork sensors firing. I'll include a screenshot so you can see for yourself.
As Chinook is a bear, he'll be pretty big as an adult. Big things in Skyrim don't do too well in small spaces. Case in point: if you and an adult Chinook go into a dungeon, adult Chinook is going to get stuck at the first 3-foot wide corridor you come to and won't be able to follow you any further. The best solution to this is shrinking him using the Setscale command on the console. Keep in mind that Chinook (as an adult) is 1.1x the size of a regular snow bear, so set his scale to 1.1 when you're ready to return him to regular size.

Credits
I've gotta mention that this mod wouldn't have happened had I not used Hypno's Wolf Follower mod as a reference for most of the script it uses. If you like this mod, go show him some love, yeah? Yeah.