Sims Keep Stealing my Dog's Food!

[Magicmoon]

I needed a junk yard dog. So I got an aggressive, dirty dog from the pound. I placed her house outside near the mailbox to chase the walk-bys. I taught her to be filthy and hostile (it didn't take much training for that). I figured to complete the picture, I would train the dog to eat table scraps instead of dog food. No problem. She won't even touch food placed in a dog bowl.

Every time I make a meal for the family, I place one of the plates outside near the doghouse so that she can eat. But Sims keep stealing her food. There will be plates of fresh food on the table, with the serving platter on the counter, yet visitors insist on taking the food from the dog. They even took it from the dog when it was trying to eat it!

Not only is this disgusting, because neat as well as slovenly Sims do it, but I keep getting warnings about my dog starving even though I have started placing several plates on the ground for her.

I know that I can reteach her to eat pet food, but this kind of defeats the whole purpose. I know I can refuse visitors, but I enjoy watching them run around the lot trying to avoid the dog.

Is the whole 'Pets eat Sim food' an entire waste of time? I already have no desire to train another pet like this because I have to go into buy mode each time just to place the plate on the ground. I noticed that cats will get on the counter to eat Sim food, but so far the dog just eats out of the trash can or eats the flowers if it can't get to Sim food.

Am I missing something obvious in the feeding of my pet or is this another one of those great Maxis ideas that is impossible to implement because of poor planning? Is there a way to feed this dog without going into buy mode each time? And is there a way to keep Sims from stealing her food?

I've been using 'noDropServingPlatter' by Squinge which forces Sims to place the serving platter on the counter instead of the floor if you cancel the 'serve' action before it is completed. I could remove that, but then Sims would drop the serving platter on the floor instead of an individual plate, which again doesn't seem to help the situation much.

Has anyone found a successful way of feeding dogs that are trained on Sim food?

[cassblonde]

My only suggestion would be to make a small fenced area that only the dog is allowed to enter ... that way you can place the food there and no one else could get at it ... You could even use the security hack by Pescado and kill them if they try(how's that for chuckles?)

Sorry that's all I got.

[MajorMercedes]

I would just direct them eat the food on the counter and not let them do anything food related autonomously.

[vilia]

Teach the family to eat dog food and then they won't want to eat off plates 

[J. M. Pescado]

Am I missing something obvious in the feeding of my pet or is this another one of those great Maxis ideas that is impossible to implement because of poor planning? Is there a way to feed this dog without going into buy mode each time? And is there a way to keep Sims from stealing her food?

It does not appear that any obvious method exists in-game to feed animals people-food. I may consider implementing this as a macro-feature to automatically whip a plate out of inventory and drop it in front of the dog.

[eaglezero]

You know, at first I thought this post would be talking about how toddler sims will eat the food from the pet food bowl if they aren't properly locked away. I didn't realize this until recently when I had a toddler that was kept in the main room (to be fair, these sims were so poor that there was no room BUT the main room*, with sleeping areas separated by those floor divider things) who kept crawling over and eating all the dog food. It got so annoying that I had them sell half their furniture so they could afford some walls and a door to lock the kid away until it grew up. 

*Okay, and bathroom.

[J. M. Pescado]

Why not just give the toddler its own bowl? Then you won't have to even get it bottles. I am currently exploring this as a feeding method for the baby controller.

[BastDawn]

Doesn't pet food make toddlers sick?  That doesn't sound like a good idea.

[jsalemi]

Doesn't pet food make toddlers sick?  That doesn't sound like a good idea.

No, it doesn't -- it's perfectly fine for them to eat.

[morriganrant]

Doesn't pet food make toddlers sick?  That doesn't sound like a good idea.

No, it doesn't -- it's perfectly fine for them to eat.

I've seen my toddlers throw up after eating it. ...maybe something to do with personality points? Like sloppy sims digging in the trash.

[jsalemi]

I think they throw up if they eat too much of it or something.  I've had toddlers eat pet food and not throw up, and it is a quick way to reduce their hunger without having to have a sim run and get a bottle for them.

[Magicmoon]

It does not appear that any obvious method exists in-game to feed animals people-food. I may consider implementing this as a macro-feature to automatically whip a plate out of inventory and drop it in front of the dog.

This would be fantastic! Right now my Sims only fill pet bowls if they are on power idle, which I rarely use. Clicking on the macro box to feed pets would be so much easier than trying to click on those tiny bowls. I'd probably train them all on people food just to avoid trying to find the pet bowls.

With the toddlers eating pet food, I've had some toddlers vomit and others not. Since I don't have a lot of pets in the game, I haven't had enough tests to figure out whether it is from overeating or whether it is from personality type. I'll put some food in the pet-less houses just for the tots and try to see if I can find a common denominator. I does up their hunger, and unless they have the throw-up fear, it is harmless to the toddlers as far as I can tell. I've also had some toddlers never touch a pet bowl, even when it is in the house available to them. I'll try to see if there is something those tots have in common too.

[Lorelei]

Why not just give the toddler its own bowl? Then you won't have to even get it bottles. I am currently exploring this as a feeding method for the baby controller.

ROFFLE!

Augustin Burroughs talks about adults choosing to eat puppy vittles in Running With Scissors. Apparently the dog food chunx taste like meaty, nutty snax. I think I'll still pass, though.

[Alie]

Why not just give the toddler its own bowl? Then you won't have to even get it bottles. I am currently exploring this as a feeding method for the baby controller.

I would love this.  It's so much handier to just let the toddlers eat the dog food.  I thought it was gross, but I'm a convert.

[akatonbo]

Personally, I'm a fan of the bottomless bottle.

[J. M. Pescado]

Toddler dog-fooding has been added to the baby controller. If a toddler Needs Food Badly and there is a dog food bowl in the baby controller room, and no parents are available to provide actual food, the toddler will eat the dog food.

BTW: Did you know that the "barf" after eating the dog food is merely a harmless animation and neither negatively impacts the toddler's motives nor satisfies the fear of barfing?

[Zazazu]

If you could get a recolor of the dog food bowl to look like it's cereal or something, it wouldn't be that gross...it'd be fairly realistic.

[Gwill]

Doesn't the pet food already look like the mush toddlers get fed when they're in the high chair?

[BastDawn]

BTW: Did you know that the "barf" after eating the dog food is merely a harmless animation and neither negatively impacts the toddler's motives nor satisfies the fear of barfing?

Cool, then I'm a convert.  Will toddlers eat from the pet food dish from Pet Stories?

[J. M. Pescado]

Cool, then I'm a convert.  Will toddlers eat from the pet food dish from Pet Stories?

Yes. You don't really have to convert, the Baby Controller will now handle it automatically.

[Ennarys]

Am I missing something obvious in the feeding of my pet or is this another one of those great Maxis ideas that is impossible to implement because of poor planning? Is there a way to feed this dog without going into buy mode each time? And is there a way to keep Sims from stealing her food?

It does not appear that any obvious method exists in-game to feed animals people-food. I may consider implementing this as a macro-feature to automatically whip a plate out of inventory and drop it in front of the dog.

I have had a sim who is eating at the table throw food from his plate autonomously to a dog who was hungry and would only eat sim food. The dog may have to be in the room at the time for that to happen though.

[J. M. Pescado]

That's be cool to see. I mean, that's how I feed *MY* dogs. I mean, honestly, DOG FOOD? Would YOU eat something labelled "PEOPLE FOOD" that came in little chunks of vile-smelling kibble? I THINK NOT!

[Zazazu]

I've seen that quite a bit, and training pets to eat pet food only is first on my list, along with potty training. I suspect it has to do with the sim's personality or dog/cat's personality. Not relationship. I've had a dog's master do it and a visitor who hadn't really even met the dog do it. I haven't been playing with pooches too much (my breeder in Urban Paradise had the dogs confined to the kennel and yard) but have two now in-game. No table scraps yet to observe.

[J. M. Pescado]

I don't bother to train them to eat any specific thing. They seem happy enough to eat without being encouraged one way or another.

[notveryawesome]

You obviously haven't played those infernal Crittur dogs. If it weren't for 'controlPets on' (or whatever that cheat-code is), the damn things would have starved. I did have my sims train them toward petfood, but it took a LONG time, and until the training-bar goes from red to green, any pet will refuse a particular activity.