Not having issues where all my pets do nothing but sleep, eat & poop. To be honest I WISH I had kind of option. Majority of the time my pets occupy themselves, yeah sure. When you first get them, give them a little love befriend them. They'll be fine on their own until when it comes to feeding and using the bathroom. You have to encourage your dog to use the rest room and sometimes (depending how new you got the animal) you would have to direct them to their feeding bowl.
It's just usually a three or four attempts and after that the game tells you that your dog knows where to use the rest room at. I haven't done this for cats yet, but I am getting there. Do I miss the needs function? Well yes I do miss it. It is rather annoying especially if you have a large household and have two or more animals in that said house hold that are going into an uncomfortable state it puts me into a panic. I had problems where the small dog couldn't go up the stairs at times to take his bath and when the dogs not using the restroom when going out for a walk after I tell them to come here and use the restroom.
There are rare occurrences where I Feed my animals food bowl and an hour or two later they're hungry again. It is a bit of a chore to be honest and I still wish we had the option to have pets controllable for story purposes anyway.
