Hi,
I I am keen to experiment with trying to awaken an animal so that it gets a bit of sentience,I remember seeing this off hand in one of the ars books (I don't remember which one).
I think I saw a spell that had some combiation of vis, creo/corpus (which is strange) but that might be horriblely wrong.
If anyone could offer suggestions on how I could go about it that would be great!
Greetings!
Page 104 of HoH: Mystery Cults: the Merinita have one Mystery called "Awakening", which seems to do what you seek, "if it is an animal, it gains Intelligence instead of Cunning".
One has to have already initiated "x" Nature Lore, and the beast has to possess Magic Might, etc, there are a number of requisites. The author/s liken it to binding a familiar.
You can also use it to create a genius loci guardian spirit.
In "Broken Covenant of Calebais", part of the story involves the Hrools, ferret-like creatures with human intelligence, and it's clear that intelligence was created through experimentation by one of the magi. Page 92+ is an Appendix on "Awakened Animals".
Just regular binding of a familiar grants Intelligence to an animal with Cunning. You could experiment with that, seek a Breakthrough. Risky, yikes! The "Heroes" line of spells that increase attributes can't grant what isn't there, though I suppose you could increase a beast's Cunning to +5, and turn that wolf into a crafty man-killing legend, and hope for a Breakthrough there. Or Warp the hell out of them, that's always fun, maybe they'll mutate into grateful savants; or maybe not. 
With Creo Animal + requisites, you can actually create magical beasts, with a high Lab Total and Magic Lore (and vis!), you can probably duplicate dragons, wolves and such, with Intelligence and powers pretty much up to the magus that wrote the spell. Except Beasts of Virtue, that's explicitly not allowed in RoP: Magic.
Farewell