Frankly and I’m speaking in terms to the game, I don’t understand how a puppy mill would even be a thought to simmers whilst playing a pet store in sims 4. I can understand the rumored hesitance but then as Developers why can’t they simple have a pet supply store and have an adoption section instead of something that suggested private breeders. You could just plop down a small area full of puppies or kittens and have ADOPT ME written on a sign somewhere along with varies photos and details of a town shelter, implying they came from a shelter instead of a breeder. NPC staff could come up to you and mention a special event behind their reason for being in the shop, some days it’s adult animals, elders and then kittens, or a mix of both if you have related pets. Say a mom and her babies, or a parent, their offspring and a single grand baby. Again staff can come up and maybe hint towards you taking all of them home as a family, or bringing in friends to adopt them separately but it means they can be reunited at the park or with play dates. I know this is a little off topic but if they didn’t want to upset anyone with the idea of a puppy mill, that would be a could way to go about deflecting the idea before it even becomes focused on.
In terms to groomers, yes I would love to see that. Maybe we could also have someone come out and do home visits if our sim didn’t have the energy or means to visit their business, or perhaps their dog is elderly and cannot be taken very far.
I’d also like to see some some sort of special feature adding to the staff/building that would make taking your animals to the business worth the walk, also the ability to turn your own home into a business and have neighbours come for cheaper trims.
However with both business and home, if your animal and another townies animal get along, they have the ability to run off together and disappear, only to return later on looking worse than they did when they were taken to the groomers and maybe be having a litter of their own. Of course this spells problems for the business regardless of the fact it isn’t their fault.
On the topic of things that could happen to disturb income, maybe if your staff aren’t trained well enough they can slip up and take too much off the top so to speak, your pet goes in a little dirty and comes out looking derpy as anything. Their fur is poorly done and the colors been changed and maybe they’re even a different breed and not your pet at all.
With a pack like this I’d rather it be a game one and worked somewhat intensely upon. Meaning instead of just stuff and rabbit holes, we get feature gameplay and new machanics to play with. Maybe they put your cat and a neighbours cat in the same drying machine and sparks fly, you let them out and weeks later your staff are footing the bill for the pitter patter of lil paws.
With the grooming skill you can also trim up human sims and create a thriving salon business for pets and their owners.
Of course you need to learn up before you can make it to the top and any slips mean you get bad publicity and lose customers.
Machines can malfunction and cause fires, hurt sims and maybe even leave one of them with a one way ticket to the cemetery.
If your sim is in the science career maybe they can modify the dryer to also clone a pet, this can be a mischief feature and when Fluffy walks out with her new twin, you have no idea what to say to her owner.
If it was possible to have new animals, it would make sense to have ones that would require a lot of care, if this was a pack about grooming and introducing new styles of play, I’d say to add horses of varying breeds, the hairer the better, or perhaps cows, however instead of milk, you have a special type made for just keeping as a pet, strange but this is sims, we can get eaten by plants and impregnated by aliens and turn blue by eating the wrong ice cream if we’re not careful so cows don’t seem that odd.
These are just some ideas. Sorry for the ramble