You can hatch a hybrid with any other pet. You might get a hybrid back, or you might get that other pet.
Improving pet talents and stats will require you to hatch with pets that have better talents and/or stats than your current pet has.
In the beginning, only train pets to adult - and only hatch pets that have at least one good talent. Keep doing that until you get two good talents on one pet at adult. If you do, STOP training this pet! You're going to use it for hatching.
Take your adult with the two good talents and hatch it with another pet that has the talents, look or stats that you want. Keep mixing, hatching and training babies until you come up with a pet that three great talents by ancient. Again, STOP training at that point and start using this pet for further hatching.
As you can see, this is going to take you a very long time and a lot of gold.