Skills were tweaked for improved increases from 50-80. During your first (burst) hour on each character, you are supposed to see increased gains. You may even gain on failures.
Animal Lore now goes up passivlely as you tame. To actively work on lore, you must target a new creature every time to gain, as there is some sort of new anti-macro code. Also, lore will not go up passively as you work on veterinary. This is somewhat upsetting, as anatomy will go up as you work on healing.
There are rumors that you cannot raise skills while inside your house. This will have a strong impact on how you work on veterinary. The house method described in method #5 may need to be tweaked in order to gain. As soon as i verify the rumors, I will post the revisions.