I've always used my Wolf, for the last 5 years. I think it's better to be unique and do your own thing. The best class of course is going to be the tenacity family. I really like Warp Stalkers as pets, so when I'm not using my Worm I use a Warp Stalker.
It pains me to see how many people haven't apparently even logged into their hunters since around 3.1. Every tenacity pet has had Thunderstomp as a talent for over a year.
As for the "best" pet, it depends on what you're doing. If you're just talking about vanilla five mans, use whatever you'd like. They're all easily soloable with anything. If you're talking about doing raid bosses, use a turtle. Their ability is Shell Wall which reduces the damage they take by 50% for 12 seconds, and combined with Cower, makes it so that your pet will be taking reduced damage most of the time. If you're wanting to off-tank or do a lot of AoE, crocolisks are best (Bad Attitude, while technically not an aoe, counterattacks anything that attacks the pet while it's active, so it will hit everything it's tanking anyway) and bears are useable (though my understanding is Bad Attitude does more damage than Swipe, which means better threat).
Unless you get into the advanced stuff, any tenacity pet should work fine. Try out whatever you're headed for with whatever you prefer, and then if you run into trouble, get one of the aforementioned pets.