You don't need mana pool for charming. Here's what I found works great:
1) Find an animal that's as low dark blue con as possible without being light blue. This is your first mistake, I think - gorge hounds and griffawns are pretty close to your level IIRC. Level difference is the single most important factor in whether your charm will break early. If you're not sure what level a monster is, you can check out the Wiki - the entries tend to be pretty accurate. Another indicator is whether you see other monsters of the same kind that are light blue (in which case you're dealing with a low dark blue) or even con (in which case you're dealing with a high dark blue). Anyway, charm the animal.
2) Find any other monster. This one can be a high dark blue, an even con, or even a yellow. Snare it. Snare is good because it will never break early and it's cheap mana-wise. It also lets you manage aggro between the two monsters, making you in some ways better at charming than an enchanter.
3) Manage aggro between your pet and the monster so that they both reach low HP at the same time. Flame lick is a good spell for this, as is resnaring. Both are very cheap mana-wise. Since the monster you charmed is lower level than your target monster, you shouldn't need to worry about the target monster getting low HP first; the only thing you need to do is to get aggro on the target monster when your pet is getting lower HP than it. Get in med ticks when you can, while kiting when you need your pet to not take damage.
4) Break charm with hide or invis to animals, kill both monsters with a low-level DoT (if you did it right, they'll be low HP enough that you don't need to spend extra mana on your most recent DoT, and you should never nuke since nukes are less efficient). You should end up with around 75% or 80% mana at least, i.e. in good shape to take on another two monsters very soon. To boot, you've just killed a low dark blue and a higher level monster for mad EXP.
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