Trying to report on a missing Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Cross-Pack Feature lead me to a discovery of a whole new serious issue.

With each new Sims 4 Expansion Pack release players are more and more accepting the slow defeat of features not always working as intended on launch. The announcement of The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Expansion Pack promised players some cool Cross-Pack features. One of them being the ability to create a Custom Getaway / Venue that encourages Dog Training.

ARTICLE UPDATE: EA Explains Current Dog Training Getaway Features

EA / Maxis has released a new statement explaining how the Dog Training Custom Getaways work, and what type of Roles you’ll need to assign to your Sims / Pets in order to make the Dog Training ground possible. As explained by EA, this feature is only available for your own Household of Sims and Pets and doesn’t encourage other Dogs / Pets from parttaking in these activities.

How can I include pets in my Getaway?

If you want to create a Dog Training Getaway, you can do so by following these steps:

• Create a household with at least one Sim and up to 7 dogs
  
  • Only pets within a household can attend a Getaway. When in your household, you can assign them to a Role (or Roles). 
• Then, use the Getaway Planner from your phone, computer, or calendar to schedule a custom Getaway.

• Next, make sure you have a supported* venue or lot that includes dog friendly objects. 
  
  • *Getaways are not supported at Retail lots, Vacation Rental Lots, Residential Rental lot Units, Wedding Venues, Vet Clinic Venues, Restaurant Venues, Small Business Venues, University Housing, all Lots in Batuu, or all secret/hidden lots (ex: Sylvan Glade, Sixam, etc). 
    
  • If you want to use a Custom Venue, you can build out the ideal space with plenty of objects for pets.

• Assign your household Sim and pets to Roles of the Getaway.

• The specific Role Activities that you can use for your Pet Roles are: Pets Play and Learn – Cats & Dogs 
  
• The specific Pet Caretaking Activities that you can use for your Sim Roles are:
  
  • Care for Animals – which will encourage your Sims to feed, clean, and care for Animals
    
  • Care for Pets – which will encourage your Sims to fill and care for Litter Boxes, Pet Bowls & Feeders, and Small Pet Habitats
    
  • Play with Pets – which encourages your Sims to socialize and play with Cats and Dogs
    
• The dogs will then take part in the supported activities as part of the Getaway, such as Playing with available Dog Toys like Balls or Obstacle Courses. You can also direct your Sim to run the “Training …”  interactions included in Cats & Dogs.

Issues with The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Cross-Pack Activities for Animals

When creating a Custom Getaway or Venue, players can choose from several different activities for Pets and Animals. If you have The Sims 4 Cats & Dogs, you can encourage activities like Care for Pets and Pets Play and Learn. The Sims 4 Cottage Living unlocks Care for Livestock activity, and The Sims 4 Horse Ranch lets you Care for Ranch Animals.

The only problem? There are no Pets or Animals allowed to the Animal-encouraged Getaway and / or Custom Venue. As soon as you start your getaway, you’ll be notified that the Animal you brought with you has been sent away to a Pet Sitter.

You can call in your Pet through the whistle icon on their thumbnail to come back, but no activities will be performed or encouraged autonomously that you’ve set.

In addition, no Pets or Animals will be brought by other Sims during your Getaway stay.

Player DinosaurKath provided their experience about this issue with additional test screenshots, saying that during their test they weren’t able to encourage any Dog Training or Animal Care activities.

If you were to host a getaway on a custom dog build venue…No dog shows up to train with. So your sims stand around and kinda do nothing, because no dog is programmed to show up to begin with! Am I doing this wrong? Am i just overseeing something? I hope so 🙁 when they talked about this feature i was so excited and now it turns out we cannot actually do what was promised to us?

There’s one dog there, and I know the getaway looks bad, but thats because this is just a test getaway. (i suspected this wouldnt work, sadly)) No dogs show up, besides my own dog, who I had to invite because the vacation system automatically kicks dogs/pets from joining.

Player ElliSims also reports on the same issue and obstacles they’ve encountered. Adding that even with all the encouragements and additional Lot Traits that should trigger these activities to happen – they still don’t. Stray dogs do come up once in a while but things encouraged through activities just don’t get triggered. Includding running an obstacle course:

Did some more testing here:

I can build a custom venue and schedule things like play with pets, feed pets, pets play and learn.  Except when I go to the lot the only thing that spawns are human npcs.  They have the tag “pet owner” but no pets come with them.  The lot does have the dog friendly trait, the obstacle course does work – just no pets spawning.

If I add the trait for stray dogs – a couple of those do show up for a little while, and npcs will kind of interact with them, but not run the obstacle course or do any training activities.

Possibly related – NPCs do not change out no matter how long I stay at the venue.  None of the normal “person X leaves and person Y arrives happens.”

– ElliSims

As players started to upvote this Sims 4 game issue / glitch, the Forum thread got moved from Bug Reports to Game Feedback. Suggesting that this isn’t a game bug but rather done purposefully in game design. Even though all the promotional text and official media suggests otherwise.

Adding salt to the burn is the official Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Cross-Pack trailer that came out a day after the Pack release. Suggesting that with these activities you can trigger Wild Horses and Cottage Animals to trigger on your Venue. Even though that’s entirely impossible at the moment.

Issues with Premade Cats, Dogs and Horses Disappearing from Premade Households

As I was playtesting this Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Expansion Pack issue I stumbled upon another major one for Cats & Dogs and Horse Ranch Expansion Pack.

When starting a new save game after the recent few Sims 4 Updates, you may notice that all Premade Horses, Cats and Dogs are permanently removed from Premade Households. The animals may show up in Manage Worlds through a legacy thumbnail, but when you load up the Household they are nowhere to be seen.

This issue was reported many times in the past few years as a recurring game bug, with the last new report being made just a month ago. User cupidbonsai reported in the beginning of September that they’ve experienced this issue with no game mods and after repairing their game. With no solution as of now to play with premade Pets in new Save Files.

Pets including horses, are missing from every premade townie household that comes with pets when I start a new save.  For example, all the pets in Chestnut Ridge and Brindleton Bay.  They show in the Manage Household picture but when I enter the household through CAS or when I load into the household in live mode they are missing.  I have repaired the EA app and uninstalled/reinstalled the sims 4 but that has not resolved the issue.  I am not using mods. It does not seem to be happening in  saves created prior to the August update so I am guessing that the problem started after the update.

– cupidbonsai

We have yet to find out if The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits Cross-Pack feature for Pets will ever be integrated into the game considering that EA is treating it as Feedback rather than a Game Issue. And when it comes to playing with Premade Pets, there hasn’t been any official acknowledgement as of now if they’re going to be fixed.

But hey, the missing Curtain Rod is finally being added a month from now!

Simmers,

Thanks for all your feedback around the modular curtains in Adventure Awaits. We'll be adding a matching curtain rod for this item in our next update, on November 4.https://t.co/96lVPPF3cj

— The Sims Direct Communications (@TheSimsDirect) October 7, 2025

What are your thoughts on the missing Cross Pack functionality in The Sims 4 Adventure Awaits? Have you experienced missing Pets in your save files? Join the discussion below and stay tuned for more Sims 4 News!