However, you HAVE to use the prospector tool before the gargoyle pick to turn an iron vein to shadow iron.
Step one: Find a place to mine for the ele with a miner of at least 65 skill. The tools (prospector tool & gargoyle pickaxe) only work for characters that can mine colored ore.
Step two: Dig once with a normal shovel.
Step three: multiple choice part of test begins...
A. if Dull copper comes up, skip step four and go directly to step five.
B. If Iron comes up, proceed to step four.
C. if any other ore type comes up, Stop, and move to a different ore vein, and go back to step two.
Step four: (you should only be here if you got Iron on that first dig) Use Prospector's Tool on the vein.
A. If it replies that dull copper can be mined there, proceed to step five.
B. Any other reply, move to a new vein, and return to step 2.
Step five: Begin mining with gargoyle pickaxe. If you don't get an ele by the time the vein runs out, move to a new spot, and go back to step two.
Step Six: have someone invis the miner, then let the pet have at it with the people needing to train pets. Note that if the characters on the same account, the miner will probably have been hit once by the ele, and may have to let the combat timer run out, to switch. So, it is best to use a different account's miner (yours or a friend) to dig an elemental for your own tamer to train pets on, unless the tamer has the mining skill personally.
Step seven: once the ele is on the pets, any numbers of pets can train on it, and the vets can walk up and heal, so long as the pets don't invis. If the pets cast invisibility, the vets may have to run until they can reestablish the ele's lock on a pet.
Step eight: When done, call in a warrior type to kill the elemental. Don't forget to loot the 25 ore off the corpse.
Note: Even Grandmaster miners have been known to go over 400 swings (over 3 entire picks, and part of 1 or 2 others) between elementals, on rare occasions. On the other hands, sometimes you can get 3 elementals in 3-4 swings of the pickaxe, and get 5-10 elementals off one pickaxe. The random number generator for UO is fickle, and very, VERY, prone to streaks.