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[Schmaven]

Is there a way to get animals trained for war to follow squads or squad members around? 

Yes: Hovering over the dwarf with <v> view then in the <p>professions tab, they are all listed next to their labors, above expelling them <a> Work Animals.  Selections are permanent, and the process names the animal, removing them from the selection list too. 
I don't know how I missed that for so long.

I've heard its possible to send war animals on raids, but don't see how to do that either.  What I'd really like to do, is get the war animals to follow a squad into the caverns.  Currently, I just move their pastures around such that they just happen to be close enough to the fighting to get involved.  The only option I've found so far is selecting a particular trainer, but that doesn't appear to have this result.  Freeing the animals from their pasture didn't get them to follow their trainer around either. 

[callisto8413]

You can assign war animals to individual dwarfs.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Animal_trainer#Train_a_war_animal

[Urist9876]

War animals are assigned to individuals, not squads.
You could assign all war animals to one dwarf or divide them amongst the squad members.
Animals trained for war (or hunt) can be assigned in the preferences menu of a dwarf, then assign a work animal.

As far as I know, there is no way to assign animals to another dwarf once given to someone. The list of assignable animals consist only of trained and unassigned animals.

[Schmaven]

Thank you, it was staring me in the face the whole time... I don't know how I missed it

[Schmaven]

So the result was a lone dwarf with 7 giant war bobcat toms attacking a web spitting forgotten beast with a shell:  The dwarf ran up into a clearing to try and bait the beast out of its webbed lair made in the process of 1 by 1 killing 4 other dwarves and a few giant war bobcats.  I never saw it happen, so I'm guessing they must be randomly climbing over 1 of the walls after something.  The forgotten beast quickly charged toward the now open door towards 1 of the straggling cats.  The forgotten beast was very deadly.  All its previous victims were 1 hit kills, mostly kicks or scratches to the head, causing explosive trauma.  So I was unsurprised when 4 of the large cats were killed on just the first page of the combat log.  But by the second page, the beast had been blinded by a scratch to 1 eye, and a bite to the other, and all its subsequent attacks were misses.  The rest of the cats together with the dwarf piled on for 8 more pages to finally put the beast down.  Now work can resume harvesting more precious metal ores and gems from the 3rd cavern level.