>>42264187Every 30min you can pet/battle/take a pic. That adds a "secret heart" basically, get your regular 10, then 22 "secret" and it'll unlock the "excited state". Walking 2km also gets you a "secret" heart, and there doesn't seem to be a cool down time for that. Also, feeding it berries when it's hunger meter is at half will give it 2.
I call them secret hearts because you don't see them and they don't count to your overall buddy level, the info graphic is a bit misleading, but if you do those 3 things every 30min, you should hit the excited state in about 4hrs.