At level 48 everyone gets a grand pet, the problem is at that level it is much harder to level up pets than it is at lower levels where the pet points ball fills every time you level.
I suggest at level 48 everyone be given a quest series where you go to various NPC's in different worlds that are happy to level any pet of your choosing. At level 48 you would be given one free pet train for a pet to be taken from baby to teen (pet would be unavailable for further training for 6 hours time), one free train from teen to adult (pet would be unavailable for further training for 12 hours time), one free train from adult to ancient (pet would be unavailable for futher training for 24 hours time), and one free train from ancient to epic.
As most players will choose to level up more than one pet, these one time free pet training sessions should not unbalance things at all. It would however be nice to be able to have at least one pet that can easily be leveled all the way up to epic at a higher level.