[OPEN] [CD] All dogs do potty on the porches and terraces

I find it very frustrating that the Dogs always go potty on the porches instead if going out to the grass. I am consistently cleaning up puddles and poop piles with having multiple dogs. Has anyone else experienced this and solved it? I heard its the way the Sims coded the dogs but It would be awesome if they could have a sign or fire hydrant and code the dogs to go potty near that particular object., then you could choose wear the potty area is in your yard thus eliminating the issue,  

@Nellylicious101 I've had this in my game also, and of course it is annoying. I tend to go one of several routes:

• Have a butler or maid, leave it for them, and try to ignore it in the meantime (the pee puddles do evaporate)
• Enclose the porch so that it is considered an 'indoor' room, then add a 'roomba' in the room (though they are unlikely to use this room to poo/pee unless they're not potty trained or are a puppy).
• Add a doggie door that is the only door that's unlocked to the dog so they use only that door. Have the doggie door exit to a tiny 'deck' that is only a step landing and not a flooring piece. This way the dog will not stop in the landing but will go down to the yard to pee/poo.
  Note: I did also find that I needed one tile of space between this 'doggy deck/exit' and the regular deck or the dogs will walk through the railing to the regular deck and pee/poo there:
  

@koshechka84 I agree, love your suggestion, and have added my 'me too' and 'XP. 🙌 I do hope the code can get modified a bit on how dogs look at porches, as you say.

In the meantime... I know this is not much consolation, but some workaround and gameplay things I've done when I had this happening in my game. Hope something helps:

Dogs going potty on the deck is annoying. To address this, my favorite options are:

• Have a butler or maid, leave it for them, and try to ignore it in the meantime (the pee puddles do evaporate).
• Enclose the porch so that it’s considered an ‘indoor’ room, then add a ‘roomba‘ in the room (though they are unlikely to use this room to poo/pee unless they’re not potty trained or are a puppy).
• Add a ‘Doggie Deck‘:
Add a doggie door that’s the only door that’s unlocked to the dog so they use only that door. Have the doggie door exit to a tiny ‘deck’ that’s only a stair-landing and not a floor tile. This way the dog will not stop on the landing but will go down to the yard to pee/poo:
Note: I did also find that I needed one tile of space between this ‘doggy deck/exit’ and the regular deck or the dogs will walk through the railing to the regular deck and pee/poo there.

As a side note, if this does NOT work for you there is at least one lot with fake grass. They are actually the grass TILES all over the ground. I can't recall the lot now, but try going in build/buy mode and use the little hammer all over the ground to see if perhaps you happen to be on that lot.

Another thing I've learned is if you have a deck outside and there are a lot of stairs, say that go up to the second floor, the dogs don't recognize those stairs they just walked up to tell you they have to go potty as a way back DOWN to go potty, so that's another issue I've seen with dogs.

The doggy door with that tiny "deck" as a one way ticket down would be a genius fix to the problem so long as your "lawn" is an actual lawn, which I would check just in case. Happy simming and feel free to keep troubleshooting with us if nothing we've talked about is helping. Someone else had a similar problem and the community was determined to help them.

@koshechka84 @PriestessAvenara Yes, this is true. If you happen to be living in The Old Salt House in San Myshuno you may find your dogs confused by the fact that all of the 'grass' on that lot by default is grass actually flooring tiles. You can kind-of see this in this video I did a while back (sorry, this was before I gave up and started making better video quality and doing audio that you can actually hear... let's just say I dragged my feet a long time): https://youtu.be/IBFvmBlZicY

Of course, you could confirm if someone did this on the lot you're currently on (if you didn't make it) by sledgehammering the grass area. I'm not aware of any more Maxis residential lots that were made this way.

@SheriGR @PriestessAvenara  Well, I've tried many variants. But it is still a Game problem that dogs and cats don't think of terraces and porches as house parts, while sims definitely consider them already inside. This drives me crazy, when in freezing temp they go out in their light clothes and then shiver from cold.

This is just insane)

Even when my dog (real I mean)) was a little puppy she would never do her potty on my porch. Grass, grass.... Or some stones for her 🙂

6 years of the game, I think this could have been corrected many times.
@SheriGR As for poops, I used them as fertilizers (until they stopped working)
Otherwise I leave it for Maids for now)) But... there are some trash plants appearing on the porch suddenly 🙂 Well, how do they grow without ground, that's the question.

@koshechka84  Wait WHAT?! Okay something is REALLY wrong with your porches. If a plant can grow on it without a pot, it's officially acting like ground. It's no wonder your dogs are going there! As far as the game is concerned your porch is being registered as actual ground! I can't say I've ever encountered this scenario before. Can you put flooring down on it? Can you clean the pee puddles or does it tell you only a neat freak would try to clean the ground? This is weird. I'm actually curious about this one! I suppose you could try redoing the porches and see if that helps, but I'm officially perplexed.

@PriestessAvenara  It was only once. I was shocked too, when I saw it. There was a screenshot, but it is now somewhere on the external disk.

After that I reset the lot. By the way it was on the biggest lot in Willow Creek (Don't remember the name, unfortunately) Near the door mat. 

So "Can you put flooring down on it? Can you clean the pee puddles or does it tell you only a neat freak would try to clean the ground?" Yes, with flooring all is ok. And yes, the puddles are cleanable. 

I think it was some weird bug. Don't know what could reason it, though.

I think after this I started to forced the dogs to go for a walk (with mods, unfortunately).

@koshechka84, I don't know if this was included in the recent patch or just in the Eco Lifestyle EP, but dog poop should work again as a fertilizer.  I just haven't gotten around to testing it yet. 

@PriestessAvenara, @koshechka84 , @Sid1701d9 ,  @SheriGR , while most dogs, even puppies might know to go potty on the grass and not the deck or patio in real life, most blind dogs will go on the patio or deck! 🤨 One of my dogs used to always go in the grass until his cataracts got so bad he was blind, and from then on he always went on the patio! 😃 He knew it as a safe zone that was close to the house and therefore wouldn't get lost! ❤️  I also have a distant relative who grew up on a ranch with many dogs, and she said all of their dogs that went blind would go potty on  the porch! 😉  You just have to clean up your porch/patio a lot!