Pet Auto-Training - Automatic Praise and Scolding (Public Beta v0.18)

This mod lets nearby Sims automatically praise cats and dogs for good behaviour and scold them for bad behaviour. It uses the game's existing pet-training interactions, with stronger responses when a pet is damaging furniture.

Furniture scratching and chewing
With this mod:

• A cat scratching furniture or a dog chewing furniture can be scolded automatically by an eligible Sim in the same room.
• One Sim responds: the nearest eligible idle Sim is preferred, with an eligible busy Sim used if nobody is idle.
• This urgent response can interrupt ordinary activities such as watching TV, playing piano, painting, exercising, cleaning or eating, including activities directed by the player.
• After a response is accepted, the pet is asked to stop through its native cancellation action so the training interaction can proceed.

Queued departures and other protected situations are checked before selecting a responder. An unavailable or ineligible Sim is skipped.

Scratching posts and chew toys
Cats can be praised for using a scratching post, and dogs can be praised for using The Chewinator. Recolours of these objects use the same behaviour and are included. Custom objects that replace the behaviour with their own private routines may not be covered.

Praise is deliberately low priority: the responding Sim must be idle. A Sim who is already painting, watching TV or doing another activity will not stop just to praise a pet. Once a response has been accepted, the pet leaves the scratching or chewing interaction so the Sim can praise it.

Other training behaviours

Behaviour	Response	Timing
Cat or dog pees on an indoor floor	Scold	After toileting finishes; urgent response
Cat or dog pees outdoors	Praise	After toileting; nearby outdoor idle Sim
Cat or dog eats from a pet bowl	Praise	After eating finishes
Pet steals plate food or eats trash; cat steals counter food	Scold	Through the supported food hooks, with normal exit handling
Pet rolls in or digs through trash	Scold	High priority, with native animation exit
Cat grooms itself	Praise	After grooming finishes
Cat or dog sleeps in a pet bed or pet house	Praise	After waking; sleeping pets are not woken to praise
Cat sits on a counter	Scold	High priority; native get-down handling
Cat or dog lounges on a human bed or sofa	Scold	Medium priority; awake lounging can be stopped
Pet sleeps on a human bed or sofa	Scold	After waking and getting off
Pet digs a hole in the ground	Scold	Medium priority
Cat hisses or dog growls at a Sim or another pet	Scold the initiator	Medium priority, after the native interaction exits
Pet starts a fight with another pet	Scold the initiator	After the fight finishes; the receiving pet is not selected for this rule

Medium-priority rules may interrupt ordinary autonomous activity, but protect player-directed busy activity. Praise needs an idle responder. Indoor responses require the same room; outdoor rules require suitable proximity and floor checks. Native game tests still decide whether a particular Sim can perform the interaction. Visitors and service Sims are not excluded simply because they are outside the active family; broader age and NPC coverage has not been exhaustively tested.

Full training and praise cooldown
Automatic praise stops when the pet has reached full training for the relevant behaviour. Scolding remains available even for fully trained pets.

There is also a 25 Sim-minute automatic-praise cooldown per pet and training area. It starts when an automatic praise request is accepted. An immediate repeat does not trigger another praise attempt. A later routing or social failure still uses that cooldown.

Different pets and different training areas have separate cooldowns. Pet beds and pet houses share the sleeping-place area. Scolding bypasses the praise cooldown; manual praise remains available.



Game compatibility
Tested configuration: The Sims 2 Ultimate Collection for Windows.
The mod uses Pets behaviours and resources from the final Ultimate Collection game files. Pets is necessary, but the minimum sufficient expansion-pack combination has not yet been established. Standalone Pets, older expansion combinations, Legacy Collection and Mac Super Collection are not currently verified configurations.

This is a resource-override mod with additional helper routines and an invisible cooldown object. It does not add a buyable object or an in-game settings menu.

Installation

1. Close the game and back up the neighbourhood you intend to test.
2. Extract PetAutoTraining-ScratchChew-BETA-v0.18.package from the download.
3. Place the package in the Downloads folder inside your Sims 2 user-data folder. A subfolder is fine.
4. Remove previous versions of Pet Auto-Training or the earlier Cat Scratch Auto Praise/Scold mod before installing this combined version.
5. Enable custom content if necessary, then start the game normally.

Use only one version of this mod at a time. All listed rules are included in one package.

Removing the beta
The cooldown uses temporary invisible timer objects. Before removal, let current training interactions finish and allow at least 30 Sim minutes without new automatic praise attempts. Keeping pets away from eligible idle Sims during that interval helps prevent new timers. Save, close the game, then remove the package. This is a precaution based on the timer design; removal of saved timer instances and save/reload during an active cooldown have not been gameplay-verified.

Conflicts

Other mod	Way to resolve	Comment
An earlier Pet Auto-Training version	Remove the older package	Versions replace the same behaviour resources
The earlier Cat Scratch Auto Praise/Scold mod	Remove the cat-only package	This combined version replaces that functionality
Another mod overriding a resource listed below	Needs individual review	Loading one last can discard changes from the other; no universal load-order fix is claimed
Custom pet objects with independent private behaviour routines	Check the object's implementation and test it	They may bypass these hooks rather than produce a direct resource conflict

No additional named third-party conflict has been established in the development installation. That is not a compatibility guarantee for other mod folders. Please include any conflict-detector report when reporting a possible conflict.

Known limitations and testing

• Praise is intentionally occasional. A fully trained pet, a busy Sim or an active cooldown can explain a missing praise response.
• Litterbox praise, other table/climbing paths and ordinary barking or howling are not included.
• Outdoor pee praise has limited gameplay evidence. Custom-object coverage and all age/service/visitor combinations are not established.
• The scratching-post repeat test showed praise on the first attempt, none immediately afterward, and praise again 46 Sim minutes later. The dog chew-toy repeat test was also reported working. The exact 25-minute boundary, independent pet/area timers and save/reload behaviour still need wider testing.
• Development checks include 1,545 offline scenarios and package/resource checks. These do not replace gameplay testing or establish compatibility with every other mod.

If you find a problem, please report:

• Your game edition, expansion packs and this mod's version.
• Cat or dog, the behaviour and object involved, and whether the relevant training bar is full.
• What the nearby Sim was doing, whether you directed that activity, and whether anything else was queued.
• Whether praise/scolding appeared, completed or disappeared; for cooldown problems, include the in-game times.
• Any ObjectError log and relevant mod-conflict report. Please omit personal information you do not want to share.

Overridden resources
The package overrides 22 native BHAV resources. Group/object context below uses readable labels; hexadecimal keys identify the exact resources.


New resources
The package adds 14 resources: eight response/social helper BHAVs and six cooldown-object resources. The cooldown object's GUID is 0xD7E31825.


Credits

• Maxis / EA for the original game behaviours used by this mod.
• The creators of SimPE for the inspection and validation tools.
• OpenAI Codex for development and documentation assistance.
• Nopke's Dish Handling Changes upload for the presentation reference. This description uses original text; that mod's code, artwork and downloads are not included.
• Everyone who tests the public beta and shares useful reports.