More Awesome Than You!

I've had this happen a few times now.
The first time was pretty soon after I installed Pets, I had a sim visit a community lot, and when it was time to leave I directed him to call for a taxi using the pay phone, but the whole area was completely blocked off by some townie playing fetch with a stray.  Shoo the sim, call the taxi; everything's fine.

Yesterday a teen sim brought a friend home from school and left him standing by the mailbox while my sim did her homework.  The visiting sim starts playing fetch with a walk-by stray, and when my teen's carpool comes to pick her up, she can not get passed the fetch players and into the car.  By the time I managed to shoo them away, the carpool left.

It's not like either the sim nor the dog are actually standing right in front of the object they block.  It seems like the game reserves the whole area they can possibly play in, and makes everything impassable.
Anyone know of a fix for this?  Preferably something that just prevents sims from playing fetch right by the mailbox/payphone/road, something that makes the players move the fuck out of the way when someone needs to get past, or something that makes the whole act of playing fetch not take up so much space.  If nothing of the kind is to be found, I guess I can live with a "no autonomous fetch" hack (and I'm almost willing to bet money on Squinge having made one of those before he took his ball and went home).

You could use Two Jeff's Visitor Controller to zap the stray and the townie, or simply ban strays from your lots.  I always do if I'm playing a game which has them, as they always seem to cause problems.