[soMa]

I believe the animal will remember you right away even when released if you once tamed it.
Just like what sphinx & habibi mentioned.
You can buy high end expensive rides that are hard to tame and take hours or days to tame them at lower skill, repetition is what your looking for.
You can also run around the world looking for rare rides in random parts of the forests, caves, dungeons, swamps and much more.
Rides can only be tamed 5 times (5 Tamers)