I think you are mixing up several scenarios here.
The summoned weapons that enchanter pets came equipped with were special in some sense in code, and being No Drop, if a player handed the pet a droppable weapon, that weapon would always be preferred by the pet over the axe (or whatever) they came summoned with.
Scenarios as they were in Classic (to the best of my knowledge):
This is my understanding on how pets and weapons worked on Live, from being a necro on Live and reading posts about this from classic times.
Weapon choice:
1a) If a pet is handed droppable weapons it will equip them, and prefer them over any innate No Drop weapons it might come summoned with.
1b) If the pet's innate max dmg is less than the damage on the weapon, it will take the damage of the weapon.
1c) If a pet is given two or more weapons, it will prefer the lower-delay weapons. Again, due to 1a, it ignores NO DROP weapons in this calculation.
Dual wielding:
2a) If the pet cannot dual wield, it will not equip a weapon in its offhand, ever. (Note: This does not work properly on P99)
2b) If the pet CAN dual wield, then if you hand the pet two weapons, whether they be 1h or 2h, it will equip them and dual wield. (Note: By the time pets can dual wield, their innate damage is higher than any 2h you would reasonably give them, so it won't affect their max hit.)
Delay impact:
3a) Before Jan 2000 nerf, the delay of the weapons was taken into account by the pet. The pet would take the lowest delay value of either their innate delay or the weapon's delay. (Historical note: all NPCs originally just used the damage/delay of the weapon outright no matter what it was; this was nerfed very early on because people were handing fishing rods to high level NPCs to debuff them, lol)
3b) After Jan 2000 nerf, weapons would never modify the pet's delay. (Note also, in the same patch: Mages gained the ability to give their pets weapons and the pets gained the ability to dual wield).
Notes on interpretation:
Some comments on interpreting classic posts about pets and weapons:
A) Things on P99 do not work the way they 'should'; pets and weapon-wielding are not fully classic here. I made bug threads about this. It's in the backlog to fix I'm sure.
B) Enchanter pet weapons they come summoned with are No Drop, and the pet's coding on live (and probably here too) causes them to prefer any weapon handed to them over a No Drop weapon.
C) When people in classic times talk about dual-wielding 2h weapons not affecting the "damage output" of the pet, they almost certainly mean the max damage of their hits, not whether they would dual wield with them. They definitely dual wielded with them, using their innate dmg/delay in primary and offhands.
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