Can't Exam Pets

I just had my Sim try out the vet skill and try to exam a sick pet on her home lot.  She was unable to do it.  After searching online I came across some info that said you couldn't use the exam table on home lots, only vet clinics.  So I had her buy a vet clinic, but she was still unable to exam pets.  I tried searching some more on this problem but all I found was a problem with examining pets where the pet would reset/ the exam table would immediately go down again after going up.  That is not the problem I'm having.

When I do it, the pet goes on the table and then my Sim will just stand there moving side to side a little, sometimes touching her chin like she's thinking and saying "hmm"  and "ahhh"  but the progress bar for the exam never goes up.  She could stand there all day until her needs deplete and the sim day is over and never get any progress from the exam.  Only once I saw a little bit of green on the progress bar (like maybe 10%), and I got excited thinking it was working but then nothing else happened after that.  Her needs depleted again.

I hired an NPC vet, and the vet could do the exam just fine.  The hired vet can exam and bill 2-3 pets while my sim just stands there with the first one.  One thing I noticed when the NPC vet does examinations is that they pull out various tools to check the pet.  My playable sim never does that.  Another thing I noticed is that the hired vet will take a long time to get the next patient, but at least they'll do it.

I deleted my mods folder, deleted localthumbcache, repaired the game and tried it both on my existing save and a new save, and my sims are still not able to exam pets.  By the way, it's been a while since I last visited this forum and I can't find how to do a bug report anymore so that's why I'm posting this here.