Playable Pets: Finally Know What’s Going On With Your Pets!

Pets having a mind of their own can make for some entertaining situations, but it can also be a source of frustration. We can’t control pets in reality, but with the aid of mods, we can at least have playable pets in The Sims.

Since the launch of Cats & Dogs one area of contention for players has been the fact that you cannot control your pets. While pets weren’t able to be controlled back in The Sims 2: Pets, this was changed in The Sims 3: Pets and became a feature that players really liked. To backtrack on that the latest iteration of the game was a step in the wrong direction, and simmers were desperate to change it.

Adding insult to injury it was determined that pets had been designed to be controllable, it just wasn’t a feature players got to enjoy. Luckily for us, the modding community is full of clever people and they found ways to bring back the gameplay mechanic for those who couldn’t play without it.

Playable Pets: Mod Your Way Back To Control

As much as we love our little simmies, they aren’t always very bright, and a lot of time it takes our intervention to make sure they stay alive. Pets aren’t much better; we’ve all gotten the notification that our pet is starving while standing by a full food bowl, for example. That’s not to mention that pets can grow upset and if your sim isn’t observant enough, you may not be able to figure out what’s wrong with them.

We’ve got a few mods to fix the problem by allowing us to select and control our pets. You can finally see their needs, make sure they eat when they’re hungry and sleep when they’re tired, and overall just guarantee they’re happier because you’re more able to monitor & direct them.

Playable Pets Mod (Outdated)

For a long time, the general go-to mod was Playable Pets by AOM however there are multiple reports of this mod being broken. It appears to function as you would expect (even allowing for selection of horses), but users state that because it has not been updated in years it should be considered unstable and be removed from your game.

The mod has been linked to delayed loading and game lag due to its outdated status; if you currently have this mod installed in your game it’s highly advised you remove it and replace it with one of our other featured options.

Selectable Pets Always

In the second half of 2023 a new mod, Selectable Pets Always by charitycodes, hit the scene acting as a spiritual successor to the original playable pets mod. The mod is not an update but instead a completely new creation that has the same functions as its predecessor.

It’s been confirmed as of 29 January 2024 that the mod is still working with recent game updates. Since it’s a script mod, however, the mod will likely need to be updated sometime in the future as The Sims 4 continues to age, update, and add new features.

Enable Playable Pets Toggle With AllCheats

If you want selectable pets but don’t necessarily want a mod specifically for it, or prefer the ability to activate & deactivate playable pets as needed, this is the route you’ll want to take instead.

First, you will need the mod AllCheats by TwistedMexi. All this mod does is re-enable cheats that worked in the game at one point but have since been deactivated—yes, there was once a cheat for The Sims 4 that allowed you to toggle playable pets in the vanilla game!

Once you have this mod installed you can launch the game and load up a household with pets. After activating TestingCheats you can use the following cheat code to make your pets selectable:

pets.toggle_selectable_pets

If everything was properly entered you will get a notification that pets are now playable, and you can control them like any other sim!

Troubleshooting Playable Pets

Since the ability to control pets was disabled for players entirely, the game is not completely polished in that respect. All of the mods & cheats shown here today simply enable a feature that already was hidden within the game so any hiccups or bugs in the functionality of playable pets are from the game itself, and not any of these mods.

Common errors include duplicate options for pets when selecting objects (such as the image above; “Nap” was available twice but one option was dimmed out), routing errors if directing a pet and another pet or sim to interact, animation resets, etc. Fortunately, they’re mostly inconveniences and don’t have a major effect on long-term gameplay, but it’s good to be aware of them anyway.

More on SNOOTYSIMS: Go and fetch some delight into the lives of your furry friends in The Sims 4 through this list of paw-some pet mods that we curated for you!

Unplayable Animals

These mods/cheats will only affect animals that are considered part of the household: Dogs, Cats, and Horses. Other creatures like Cows, Llamas, Sheep, Goats, Bunnies, and Chickens are treated by the game more as objects so they can’t be added to a family or made selectable. There’s no way to change this without fundamentally overhauling the game system so it’s highly unlikely we will ever see that change.

In Conclusion

With a few playable pet mods and/or some helpful cheats, you can gain control of your Cats, Dogs, & Horses like we could in The Sims 3. Keep an eye on your pets’ needs, mitigate negative buffs, and overall manage their lives to keep them healthy, happy, and safe. If we can’t trust our sims to thrive without intervention how can we expect our pets to? Well now, you don’t need to worry. Have fun with these mods, and happy simming!

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