Successful breeding of Pets?

Does anybody know if your dog/cat can breed with a stray? Or is it by design that only pets living in the same houshold can do it?

"Moderator_Gagea;c-16184319" wrote:
Does anybody know if your dog/cat can breed with a stray? Or is it by design that only pets living in the same houshold can do it?

My dog was able to breed with a stray...now I am waiting if she is pregnant or not...but the breeding part was successful.

That's great. So I'll have my dog tray again. ;)

My household had a sim couple and two dogs each, so four dogs. Two small dogs grew up together with one of the sims, the other two dogs grew up together with the other sim, until the human sims got married and moved in together. That sort of formed dog-couples already, the two small dogs are very friendly toward each other and have licked each other's faces since the time they're pupsters, and the two big dogs are clearly friends, too.

There' s a male and a female in both dog couples, and I never had them fixed, so you can imagine it's been quite a heat-circus occasionally. I never encouraged them to mate, but let them do and live and love as they liked, also to test how it works. I've played the family for a long time now and I'm sure there's easily been over ten heats per dog and a lot of doggie-woohoo (the encourage option greys out when they've successfully mated, that's how I know they actually do it even if I don't happen to look when the hearts are flying), and not once did they get pregnant from that.

After their owners got a baby though I decided that it's time for the human baby to have her own doggie friend to grow up with, so I started encouraging them to mate whenever they were in heat. I didn't encourage them at any other time, feels too forceful, but when they were in heat, I encouraged them to mate with the one I knew they were friends with anyway.

First heat went past without pregnancy, but with the second heat my little doggie got pregnant. I was very worried after seeing many threads about breeding problems, but everything went smoothly: I noticed she was successfully pregnant immediately after because the puppy is my eighth household member, so all the encourage and other matings got instantly greyed out long before I got the actual game announcement about her being pregnant. It took about one sim-day before she went to labor, and then the pupster just appeared.

There's always those growling and picture-slashed-over thought bubbles during heat, but with the non-desired partner dogs. When not in heat, they all get along perfectly fine.

Also I think that the successful pregnant couple is better friends with each other than the other two, probably because I played them more when they were pupsters and growing up together. Now they're being adorable and licking their pupster's face too, 'n playing with him.

All of this just to give another 'this is how it went with me, and how long it took' description into the mix.

I haven't installed the game yet, but I recall with TS2 Pets, it could take days before the pets would even attempt mating, because their friendship needed to be high enough (much like Sims and whoohoo). It seems like a huge issue with C&D is that you can't view the pets' panels to see if that is in fact the problem.

The disappearing puppies/kittens thing is disturbing. I hope that issue gets fixed.

My cat had a kitten once. Never again. I keep trying and trying. Also, certain interactions no longer show up ---- become companion is one of them. It did work before. They can't do the Cat aspiration anymore because of this.

And I keep using NuzzleNip --- she does look like she tries to mate but never gets pregnant anymore

"KJB;c-16153513" wrote:
I tried getting my cat to mate with different strays on the lot. I think Ive tried 4 different cats, a few times each. Still nothing. I wanted to adopt another cat to make it happen, but they're all neutered.

@kjb - you can go to the vet and have them un-neutered, so they will be fine again :) You can also adopt strays at no cost.

Not sure if this helps, but I had issues getting my animals to breed with one another after merging two households, as well as when I tried making them breed with strays. I downloaded the controllable pets mod just to see if there was anything I could do from the animal's pov. With both situations the animals I was trying to breed together didn't know each other. I did the "introduction" interaction with the mod and suddenly they weren't rejecting when I would encourage them to breed. I had tried the "be nice to" interaction, thinking a lack of a relationship was the problem, but they apparently still didn't know each other despite living with each other.

TLDR; If your pets are ignoring your encouragements to breed, download the playable pets mod and introduce them to each other.

Just a guess, but I think the 'be nice to' interaction is really not working, so there's no way (except the mod described above) to work on dogs' relationships except hanging out with them a lot and hoping for best. It's also clear that the dogs need some level of acquaintance, maybe even friendship, before mating, so that's a deadlock in many situations.

If you have your heart set on breeding, I'd recommend creating the intended breeding couple together with their owner, maybe even as puppies and let them grow up together to maximize their friendship.