The Sims 4 Pet Training Skill Guide
There is so much fun in The Sims 4: Cats & Dogs including the incredible sims 4 pet training skill.
This skill lets you make the most well-behaved pets!
Having pets in the game is so important to me because my dog is my best friend and creating her in the game makes me so happy.
And of course, I want her to be the best trained and most adorable version of herself so pet training is a must have skill for my sims.
What is Pet Training Good For?
When you have a pet in your sim’s household you want them to be well-behaved and not destroy everything and this is where pet training comes into play. You can teach them fun tricks, encourage them not to do bad behaviours and even run obstacle courses with them.
How to Gain The Sims 4 Pet Training Skill
The pet training skill is gained through teaching dogs to do different tricks. To start you’ll have five options including:
- Lie Down
- Speak
- Sit
- Roll Over
- Fetch (Requires a Ball in Sim’s Inventory)
Your sims will spend some time teaching the dog the trick, if the action is cancelled you can always resume at a later time.
When the pet has completed their training there will be a notification letting your sim know that their pet has learned to do it. Luna learned to play dead!
As you gain the skill you’ll see more options opening up to your sim like heel and play dead.
Ideal Mood for Pet Training
With every skill in The Sims 4 there’s an emotion that ties to it and will help your sim gain it more quickly. The ideal mood for learning pet training is focused. To get a sim feeling focused easily you can ponder moves on a chess board.
Best Traits for The Sims 4 Pet Training Skill
You really need to think about the traits you give your sims when thinking about what skills you want them to have. Certain traits can help them with their skill gains!
- Cheerful: A sim with the cheerful trait will get random happy moodlets which can stack with genius to gain the skill quicker.
- Dog Lover: Sims with this trait are going to love being near dogs, get positive moodlets when around them and gain relationships faster which helps with training
- Genius: Since the ideal trait is focused this will give your sim random focused moodlets which can be helpful
You should also add one specific lot trait to your sim’s lot:
- Training Ground: Sims gain the sims 4 pet training skill more quickly on this lot!
How to Cheat The Pet Training Skill
Thankfully there’s a way to cheat the pet training skill which is awesome because you can train pets faster with a high skill. To cheat skill you need stats.set_skill_level skill_dog 5 to max it.
There are only five levels of this skill, so if you want a lower level you’ll change the five to a number from 1 to 4 instead.
Levels of the Sims 4 Pet Training Skill
| Skill Level | Level Unlock |
|---|---|
| Level 1 | Your sim can train dogs to sit, speak, fetch, roll over and lie down. They can also show off their pet to other sims. |
| Level 2 | Your sim can now teach their dog to heel, shake, and play dead. They also unlock the ability to practice tricks. |
| Level 3 | Your sim can now send their dog to explore. |
| Level 4 | Your sim can now show off pet tricks and command their dog to attack others. |
| Level 5 | Your sim can have their dog perform tricks for passing sims and will be able to teach tricks to dogs faster. |
Training Out Behaviors
You can also use the pet training skill to train out bad behaviours. There are lots of things that pets do that can be annoying like barking, jumping on counters or peeing in the house.
After a pet does one of these behaviours you can click on them and choose to lecture about the behaviour and it’ll count toward getting them to stop but you’ll need to try and train out this behaviour more than once.
You can choose to be friendly and lecture or beg to stop doing something, or you have the option to be mean to your pet with interactions like scold, yell at or shoo.
Once a pet has trained out a specific behaviour you’ll see a notification saying that they have learned not to do the behaviour and they won’t do it again.
Attacking Sims
When your sim reaches level four of pet training they’ll unlock the ability to tell their pet to attack another sim. You’ll find it under trained commands and a menu will pop up asking which sim to attack.
The animations for this are hilarious, the dog even looked mad. It attacked this sim and it made the sim like my sim slightly less which was funny.
After a pet has attacked a sim you can lecture them about attacking, which is funny because YOU told them to!
Running Obstacle Courses
Another thing that’s effected by pet training is obstacle courses. If you head over to the park in Brindleton Bay you’ll find a great dog park with a whole obstacle course set up, or you can add one to your sim’s house.
You can get your sims to command a pet to practice or you can run the course with them and you’ll get a score. The goal is to not have any faults and get a high score in a fast time.
The amount of training experience your pet has and skills they know how to do (i.e., sit, speak, etc.) the higher their score will be. My pet without training had faults and ran it much slower than my well-trained French Bulldog!
