Wolf pack not activating

hello - my character has 498 spirit, I have 160 spirit not being used and I can not activate wolf pack. I can have other minions - not a minion build here. I just want wolf pack for some defense. Also I have had issues with cast on crit and cast on bs gems sometimes not activating. I have had to delete a high level cast on crit that just would not activate but others would. Seems spirit reservations are buggy as hell. my POB: shaman plant blaster caster https://maxroll.gg/poe2/pob/pq18ib00

Figured it out for now I hope. Spellslinger wand did not have a spell linked to it. Someone else posted that on another thread. Spent a frustrating game day trying to figure out this one.. come on guys.

Wow, thanks for this. Putting a random spell into spell slinger (in my case, a spare old bone cage from campaign) fixed the issue. Very strange indeed.

I had it come up.... I turned off all the spirit reserving items, went to main screen, then went back and openes up the puppies first.