Is there any way to group meshes in a single model to make animating parts of that model easier? so I have 2 large parts of a single model and lots of smaller parts that I want to eventually animate using keyframes and I would like to put each part in it's own group to control them easier.

I know ctr + G makes a group which looks like this: 

But I can't do anything with it... when I right clock on it and hit "select" it says "not implemented yet" 

Do I have do install something to get this feature to work?

Are there any other ways to group parts of a model for easy selection?

Also on a side note I'd love to be able to "isolate" these groups so they don't accidentally combine or attach to other parts of the model.
You can work with Vertex Groups which you created in the Vertex Groups panel in the Mesh data tab:



Here you can select and deselect them, rename them, delete them, assign vertices etc. When it comes to animation, you'll propably want to use an armature. Armatures can contain bones, which can be animated (so they contain the keyframes), and by using vertex groups you can tell Blender which vertices to move and how much as soon as you move a bone.