What the FUCK is my palico doing when I am trying to play pierce HBG?

I like taking my HBG for a spin every now and again. And I especially like playing some pierce despite it not exactly being maximally efficient. And I thought to myself "hey, the shieldspire should give me some breathing and aiming room to use that crit distance without ballistics". Well no. My cat is the heaviest and most useless piece of garbage I've ever seen when I play HBG. When I play with blademaster weapons, it gets off 1-2 paras a hunt. When I play HBG, it gets what feels like 1-2 ATTACKS a hunt. The rest is spent running circles around my feet and following me. It's not even a good distraction because if the monster targets my Cat, it basically still targets the spot where I'm at. I have the monster constantly run into the "too close" distance, no matter what. I can dodgeroll 1-2 times and get off one shot before it closes the distance to me or my cat (which doesn't matter, same spot) again. If I am clearly engaging and being engaged, why is the damn cat so clingy? It's like it refuses to go farther than 5 meters from me.

It's actually fucking ridiculous. Short of bringing ballistics, I don't see a fucking way to play around this. The cat actually brings NOTHING to the table besides angling the monster in a way that I can't even get good shots off while it's STILL on a freaking leash. I can't create any space, and my cat is sure as fuck not helping.

And on top of that IT'S SO FUCKING ANNOYING WATCHING THE STUPID FURBALL RUN ITS LAPS AROUND ME WHILE I HAVE TO SPAMDODGE TO TRY AND GET CRITICAL DISTANCE. OH MY GOD IS IT INFURIATING.

/rant

wew.