You might want to take a look at this thread from December that discusses bouras:
http://vboards.stratics.com/showthread.php?t=171199.
I haven't tried the wolf spiders yet, but have been using the boura almost exclusively for about two months while I work on some new tamer characters I started on a few of the Japanese shards. Below is a bit of a dissertation on what I've been doing with them. Not sure it's what you want to know, but perhaps it will illustrate why I think these are absolutely wonderful pets for people just starting out in UO who might want to make a tamer character. Two lowland boura are pretty darn awesome for starter pets. A high plains boura paired with a lowland boura is even better, although the combo does leave your tamer on foot. They do require vetting, so they're great for raising vet and lore skill on a new character. And if you want to do a bit of farming for the best animals you can get, you'll also get some taming gains. They move pretty quickly once their dex stat is maxed out, so don't worry that they'll always just lumber along. They can move with almost lightning speed when they want to. You probably can't do peerless with them and I've never tried them against something that does a lot of casting or poisoning or even to kill something that does a lot of cold damage. You'll definitely want to keep going with raising taming skill so eventually you can trade up to something better and yes, the "water buffalo" jokes from friends and strangers do get a little old after a while. But if you want to start a tamer character out cheaply and don't mind the work involved, I think you'll find them to be almost invaluable.
I start out my tamer characters on new shards with 50 taming and 50 magery skill. Kill a couple of sheep and make bandages out of the wool and buy a couple of apples. If I remember to do it, I also use some of the character's starter gold to train vet and lore skill. Bank the gold and regs and then run each of the characters, still in their newbie character gear, to Ter Mur via the moongate.
You can usually find an abundance of horses and a ridable llama or two in the area near the Ter Mur moongate to tame as a temporary mount. Then run to the NE, cross the bridge and then run SE. You'll find a lot of lowland and ruddy bouras, along with a handful of sliths, silver serpents, mongbats, and maybe a few void creatures. With 50 taming, it doesn't take long to tame two lowland boura. (Don't bother with the ruddy boura. They are probably okay pets for human chars with JOAT taming but I wouldn't waste the stable slots on them for a real tamer character.) Your new boura can easily take on any aggressive spawn in the area and before you know it, you're already making gold and collecting leather and maybe even some imbuing ingredients on a brand-new character!
Run the pair of boura you just tamed back to the stable in Royal City, feed, give a command and throw 'em in the stable to bake for a week. Then go back and get another pair if you want to have something to make some gold with while the first pair bonds.
The unbonded lowland bouras do just fine against non-paragon wisps, so buy some strength potions, grab bandages, and take them to the champ spawn near the Spirituality gate in Ilshenar to make yourself some gold to buy starter gear and maybe loot a few pieces of LRC gear. You'll also raise vet and lore skills and your intelligence (and dex) stats will start to soar. You might even get a few scrolls of transcendence you can keep or sell. After the boura have trained up a bit and your vet skill is reasonable, try a paragon wisp if you want. You'll have to run back to the gate and pop out into a town like Luna or Umbra to bank your gold, unless the gypsies just happen to be nearby in Ilshenar. You can log out at the inn north of the champ spawn area if you need to leave quickly.
When you get bored with the wisp-hunting, switch to taming low-end stuff like wolves and bears and pretty soon your strength stat will start climbing like crazy. If you still don't have the gear to kill the tamed bears yourself, just tame two, release one and have it kill the other one while you vet the unreleased one. Take the leather and sell it if you won't be needing it.
Before long, between looting LRC pieces off the wisps and the gold you've collected, your newbie character will have a full LRC suit and enough gold to buy a full spellbook and some empty rune books and maybe a sending bag and some powder. Stats will be getting higher and so will skills. If you're lucky, you'll be able to find and buy a cheap imbued suit with some magery skill on the jewelry. Now you can go to Ter Mur and work on getting a high plains boura.
You need to go to the area north of the Royal City and south of the water. Stay central or to the west. Avoid the east end of that area because it's a bit infested with kepetch that like to pop out and surprise you. If you insist on scouting out that area though, keep your sound on and listen for the rustling sound the kepetch make and don't say you weren't warned!
High plains bouras are pretty easy to tame if you get them hitting on your lowland boura while it is in follow mode. You don't want your pet to actually be fighting back or it will anger the high plains boura and put an end to your taming attempt. Just keep your pet vetted while you tame the high plains boura. Since your lore skill probably isn't GM yet, you'll have to wait until the high plains boura is actually tamed before you can lore it and decide whether or not to keep it. Refer to the thread mentioned above for stats on high plains bouras. Be sure to skin the ones you kill because they drop horned leather, pelts, etc. and you might be extremely lucky and find a Boura Tail shield (I haven't been that lucky myself). You'll want the horned leather for turning it in at the library to get a Birds of Britannia talisman (it has +5 taming/+5 lore mods on it). I usually tame two of the high plains bouras--one for bonding and one to play with unbonded, knowing it's easy to replace if it dies.
By this time, perhaps your first pair of bouras have bonded and maybe you've acquired enough stuff to get your magery skill high enough to mark runes and maybe pull off inviz spell once in a while. If yes, head off to the wisp dungeon in Ilshenar with a sending bag and farm more wisps. Or if you're totally burned out on wisps, go to Despise and kill ogre lords. Or go to Ter Mur and kill sliths and void creatures. The Tomb of Kings would probably also be doable. Or buy a boat and head to the Isle of Fire to make yourself a rune for the Underworld. Do the quest to get into the Abyss. Getting the acid sacs can be done with the boura if you're careful, watch your step and are prepared to vet and heal the boura occasionally. (If you die in the Underworld, don't forget you can rez at the tombstone right inside the entrance.) The lowland boura stomp all over Tyball's Shadow. (To get into the area where he spawns, park the boura at the edge of the maze area and use teleport to hop scotch your way across the columns. Just pray the water eles leave you alone. Then log out and back in to retrieve your boura.)
I haven't used the boura in the Abyss yet, but suspect they'd stomp those squeaky little goblins with no problems at all or easily handle the pixie/wisp spawn. Taking on the renowned pixie, however, might be long and tedious and require more bandages than you might want to carry.
Your boura will be more than up to the task of doing the solon quests for powder and sending bags. Of course, using bonded bouras will make things a bit easier.
If you're feeling even more ambitious, take your boura to Doom to hunt rotting corpses. A trained pair of bouras do extremely well against RC. You can also use them to kill the Sphynx, but it can be pretty tedious and you go through a lot of bandages. They also handle tsuki wolves and bake kitsune in Tokuno with ease, although you will be doing some vetting.
As you're killing stuff, work on the honor virtue if you plan to use it later for taming additional pets. Once your magery skill is pretty decent and the boura are bonded, you can also do the quest to donate to the library. I usually hunt wyverns in the Lost Lands or wyverns and drakes in the north end of Destard for horned leather to donate. Poke your head into the main area of Destard if you want a bit of excitement and kill regular dragons for the much-desired barbed leather. If your boura are maxed on stats and pretty well-trained and you have a big supply of bandages and patience, try killing a greater dragon. Just make sure you have it isolated and have a safe empty area to retreat to for rezzing the pets. You can also kill serpentine dragons in Ilshenar for barbed leather if you don't mind the run to the Serpentine Passage and have loads of karma to burn off. The centaurs are good for some spined leather and lots of arrows if you plan to make an archer.
Well, this just about exhausts my thoughts about bouras for the moment. Not sure I really answered the OP's questions, other than to try to illustrate how useful these pets can be for newbie tamers made by people who don't want to use an advanced character token and who don't have lots of extra gold to spare.
