The Sims 2: Pets/Walkthrough

Finally your sims can have pets. Pets provide new opportunities for fun and money. This article explains the basic mechanics of pets for your sims.

Creating a Pet
There are several ways to get pets for your sims. The main way is the new Create-A-Pet panel in Create-A-Sim. Select the usual add new member then decide on a cat or a dog. Next you have six panels to customise your pets. Other sources for your pets include phoning the pet adoption agency and buying from a pet store.
 * Panel One: Basic Info. Name, Age, Sex, Size (for dogs), and Bio
 * Panel Two: Breeds. Choose from a number of breeds.
 * Panel Three: Coat. Decide the colour of your pets fur, the texture and what markings go where.
 * Panel Four: Modifiers. Adjust the size of your pets from the eye colour to the size of your pets feet.
 * Panel Five: Collars. Choose from dozens of collars.
 * Panel Six: Personality. Choose your pets zodiac and personality.

Pets Features
The first thing you'll notice is that you can't control pets directly. But you can train your pets to do what you want.

Age
All pets go through three age stages. Kitten/Puppy, Adult and Elder. like sims, each stage comes with its own challenges. Pets can also breed with themselves. However dogs and cats cannot breed between themselves. Dogs can only breed with dogs and cats can only breed with cats. As well, you need a pet house to breed. Finally, you can only own six pets at a time and that's if there's four or less sims on the lot. The totals are as follows.
 * 8 sims. 2 pets
 * 7 sims. 3 pets
 * 6 sims. 4 pets
 * 5 sims. 5 pets
 * 4 or less sims. 6 pets

Needs
Pets, like sims have eight basic needs.
 * Hunger. Eating pet food or sim food
 * Comfort. Pets can relax on pet beds or sim beds.
 * Bladder. Pets can relieve themselves anywhere. Buy a litterbox to prevent cats from this and housebreak your dogs to stop it.
 * Energy. Pets can sleep on sim beds or pet beds.
 * Fun. Play with your pets to keep this need high. Pets can also play with themselves.
 * Social. Pets need to socialise just like sims.
 * Hygiene. Cats will lick themselves for this need but you need to give dogs a bath.
 * Chew/Scratch. Keep watch over this need. If you don't have a chew bone, your dog could wreck your favourite chair. Likewise, an absence of scratch posts will manifest itself on your sim's furniture.

Relationships
Pets have some special relationships with sims.
 * Master. Dog to Sim. Sims with master status get preferential treatment from their dogs. Dogs can only have one master.
 * Pack. Dogs to Pet. Pack is somewhat similar to the friend relationship.
 * Mine. Cat to Sim. Sims that cats consider mine get special treatment from their cats.
 * Pet Friend. Sim to Pet. The equivalent of Friend to sims.
 * Pet Best Friend. Sim to Pet. The equivalent of Best Friend to sims.

Tricks
Pets can learn special tricks to entertain your sims. To teach a pet a trick, click on the pet and select Teach Command then click on the desired command. Alternatively, you can hire the obedience trainer for your pets. The trainer also supplies the cure for a furry aliment. Tricks are required for pet career advancement.

Careers
Yes, Pets can have careers. Pet careers are chosen in the normal manner but have these differences. Choose form Service, Security and Showbiz. When your pet becomes an elder, they can retire. Getting a promotion also unlocks a special bonus. When your pets become promoted, you unlock, either a new coat colour, a new marking or a new collar. These allow for greater customisation. You can even share your unlockables with console players. To do this, find the code for the unlockable in neighbourhood view, copy it. Open the specific menu in the console version and re-enter the code.
 * There are only 4 levels.
 * There are only 3 career paths.
 * Promotion relies on tricks instead of skills.
 * Only adult pets can have a career.

Personality
Pets like sims have five personality traits. These traits are. Unlike sim personalities, there are only 3 points in each personality score. As well, maximising one personality doesn't put a strain on the other personality traits. You just pick one of the three scores in the trait then move on to the next one.
 * Genius/Doofus
 * Hyper/Lazy
 * Independent/Friendly
 * Aggressive/Cowardly
 * Pigpen/Finicky

Re-enforced Behaviours
You can control pets autonomy by re-enforcing certain behaviours. To do this wait until a pet performs an action you'd like to re-enforce, then click on the pet and select Praise for if you want them to do the behaviour or Scold for if you want them to do the opposite. If you keep doing this, eventually you'll hit a maximum and the pet will never perform the opposite behaviour. You can re-enforce these behaviours.
 * Eats Pet Food/Eats Sim Food
 * Goes on Pet Furniture/Goes on Sim Furniture
 * Housebroken/Yardbroken
 * Goes on Pet Beds/Goes on Sim Beds
 * Calm/Disruptive
 * Playful/Hostile
 * Clean/Filthy
 * Respectful/Destructive

Other Things

 * You can now invite whole households at a time to your house.
 * Collections are now enhanced. Choose what lot types they appear on, what order they appear in and modify the object order in them.
 * New Build Mode Tools. Diagonal Roofs, Sledgehammer Tool and the Flatten Lot tool are available to any architect now.
 * Game Tip Encyclopaedia. You no longer have to wait for something to happen in the game to read about it. The game tip encyclopaedia contains tips from all the expansion packs.