If you have completed " a Daedras Best Friend" and you join Companion Aela on the mission Totems of Hircine" you are SOL. One of the worst errors in the game. You are stuck with Aela until the Patch if it works and you can't complete the mission, or change your NPC, or command your NPC, or use your NPC to carry, and you cannot marry, there is pretty much nothing you can do except appreciate the company of your permanent companion with a cg hardbody and messed up face art.

Seriously, shouldn't Bethesda email us all and warn us not to do certain things to avoid critical errors until they fix them??

That quest worked fine for me.

I didn't see anything about that quest in the 1.4 patch notes. Even if a patch does fix this then there's a chance that it won't work because you've already started the quest.

You're better off loading an older save file than waiting for a patch that addresses this.

iT is at the top of the fix list under what we are working on in the patch, and it states that it has been corrected. You have to have competed A Daedras best friend for this error to occur and it may only happen if you locate one of the totems, which I did, even though I did not pick it up.

Yeah this bug has discouraged me from playing, I really hope it does get fixed.

the locations arent always the same.
when you start the mission, see where it is & reload if its there until you get another one

Worked fine for me.. still playing 1.3..
Not calling anyone lyers, but it is probably dependant on the area that the totem spawns

I married Aela and live in Whiterun with my mistress Lydia

I'm not getting any tier 3 quests from the companions so the Totem one has never started. Aela merely has an endless supply of animals needing extermination. I had Daedra's Best Friend quest open for at least 100 hours, probably more, but of course the platinum was more important than the very helpful dog.