More Awesome Than You!

I'm beginning to really dislike sim-dogs.. Why? Because something appears to be wrong with their programming in regards to behaviour training. My sims have a dog who constantly barks aggressively even though he is fully trained for playfulness towards others, and has a neutral aggressive/cowardly personality setting. He barks/growls at everyone and everything, and it's starting to drive me up the wall. I'm starting to wish the sims had bark-collars to put on their dogs.  ::)

I have a beagle who used to do that all the time in real life, but they don't give you the options to stop them from doing that in the game. We need a choke chain, and -kick you in your dumb head- option. Otherwise, how are we supposed to break their little doggy souls?

I had a [sim] dog once that constantly destroyed furniture though he was fully trained NOT to do that.

Well, as I'm not that big a dog person (hate them actually - love cats though) I took it as a given that dogs are plain stupid - why should they be any more intelligent than their sim owners... ;)

Okay, "kick you in your dumb head" made me LOL. I was on a lot last night that I forgot to use the visitor zapper on for strays, and a mutt came into my yard. I sent my sim out to yell at it and it peed itself and ran away. I may allow strays for a while, because that was funny. You should be able to beat strays with the newspaper.

As in TS1, the dogs are programmed to chase the passing-by sims, especially the mailman and the newspaper boy/girl. It was supposed to be funny animation, but after a while it became very annoying.

Buy cats...:).

Well, I think I found the source.. There's an emitter called something to the effect of "Bark Randomly"... And well, you know Maxis and "randomization".. It never works as intended. If I can't figure out how to nix it myself, I'll begin begging Pescado and Jeff to do it for me.  ;)

Edit: Oh I give up...  >:(

I'm wishing I could turn off the random bark sounds in the neighborhood. I know that's verging on anal retentive, but it's annoying.

I think lowering ambient sounds in the sound control gets rid of them.

Hey-yeah, but then you lose things like crickets, too. I like the other ambient sounds. I am thinking about uninstalling, honestly. The annoyances are starting to out weigh the good parts. Eh, it's really no biggie.

Aw, I love the crickets!  I wish pets came with more birds.  I want owls at night and I want to chase ferral pigeons in the park.

I also have a problem with aggressive dogs.  I had two (mother and daughter) both friendly and cowardly, both trained to be nice, but they'd still growl at each other and fight passing strays, and when I tried to scold them for it the only option I got was to scold them for "not destroying furniture".
By the way, sims should always run to scold their pets, not amble slowly across the lot so that the pet has forgot what it was doing, and started doing something useful in stead.  I'm sure that's a simple hack to make, but it annoys me that maxis didn't include it to begin with.

My Sim has a chocolate lab who is friendly to the mailgirl.  She stops her rounds to pet the dog!

I spent a moment wondering what kind of chocolate one needs a laboratory to make...

Well, there is the chocolate machine that's the career reward for the Cuisine career...