Even on Switch Skyrim still has a couple of really nasty bugs. Stay the **** away from stray dogs if Meeko isn't still alive. They can despawn while they're following you and than you can't get another pet follower. The only way to remove the despawned stray dog as a follower is to have Meeko follow you instead (for whatever reason it only works with Meeko) so you are SOL if Meeko is dead like he was for me. It triggered early enough for me to reload a save where the dog was still following me and dismiss it.
Honestly it's really frustrating to play these games on a console when half of the time, the only recommendations for when something goes wrong are "open the Console command menu that's only available in the PC version and type this command in to fix it" . The Stray Dog one was the only one that I felt was serious enough to warrant rolling back to an older save but there have been other things like the horse I'm riding just disappearing so I have to wait like 30 in-game days for it to respawn so I can ride it. I absolutely adore Skyrim as a game but for **** sake, play it on PC. You get mods that are supposed to be really good and you get the goddamn Console Command menu that lets you fix whatever breaks during your playthrough.