The Sims 3: Pets Chapter 1: AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

That's right: The Sims 3. I've had this game since, oh, probably six months after it came out; I can't remember exactly when I bought it. But anyway. I played it off and on when each expansion pack came out, and now the Pets expansion has finally been released, so I've been playing more lately, mostly because you can now have horses in the game - which is pretty awesome so far.

My plan is to play this game until Skyward Sword comes out next month - I'm sure I'll be tired of it again by then. There just don't seem to be enough differences between it and the previous two Sims games. I suppose it would have helped if I hadn't played the Sims 2, but what can you do? I had to get my Sim fix on somehow. So anyway.

First off: meet my Sim self.















In this picture, she was living in a tiny house because I hadn't yet had my brilliant get-rich-quick idea. Which was this: Move in a copy of my previous Sim self's family, steal all their money, and then kick them out into the street. So I did it, and became rich! Here's a picture of my new digs.















This was before I fenced in the rest of the backyard and put in a box stall in the back for the horse I was yet to buy, but anyway. As a citizen of a brand-new neighborhood, I decided to go to the local dog park to see if anybody had brought their dogs there to play. Unfortunately, there weren't any dogs, but there was a kid who wanted to play catch.















Yay, fun, cool, etc. After I was done at the park, I decided to explore the town a bit - and saw a wild horse!















Apparently Sunset Valley's zoning laws all disappeared when this expansion pack came out. I can't remember the last time I heard about wild horses roaming about in urban areas. I mean, I'm sure it happens, but still.

Of course, me being me, I had to find the horse and pet it.















I wanted to tame the horse, but it wasn't having any of that, so I had to settle for grooming a horse that lived across the street from my house.















Improbably, the above horse apparently gave birth to triplet foals, which...is very, very rare if not impossible. But whatever.

Here's the backyard once I was done modifying it for horse occupation.














The next day, I decided it was time to purchase a horse. So I headed to the equestrian competition center to check out my options, and ended up buying (I think) a Gelderlander who was originally named Beau, but I changed his name to Adejaan. His traits were Agile, Friendly, and Neat. Yay!

Here I am getting on him for the first time.















With any luck, I wouldn't be that awkward about it in real life. It's been a while since I've been on a horse, though, so who knows.

And here we are heading for home. Heels down, Sim! Heels down! Sigh.















We had to stop on the way home, though, when we saw a whole group of wild horses along the way and I, uh, unceremoniously dismounted from the horse.















When I tried to get back on the horse, this happened somehow.















Embarrassing, but at least it was nighttime, right?

Eventually the horse and I made our way home. Since you can control the horse independently of its Sim owner, however, I decided to have some fun. Apparently Adejaan likes to be a horse-about-town, and decided to visit the home of my Sim's soon-to-be romantic interest.














Despite his ability to stick his head through the door, he was unable to ring the doorbell, so I had him head home. The two of us were in for a big day tomorrow!

So, bright and early the next day, we headed over to the local equine training grounds to do some practice jumping. This didn't end the way I wanted it to.















That's right - he refused the water jump. Well, whatever. Despite the fact that he's Agile, thus, should be a good jumper, he doesn't seem to be into jumping. Maybe I'll make him a racehorse instead.

So over the next few days, I trained Adejaan as a racehorse. Eventually we were rewarded with a cool new "racing saddle."
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Uh, I hate to break it to you, guys, but that's a western saddle, not a racing saddle. And there are actual racing saddles in the game, so this must just be some kind of misunderstanding. I do like the color scheme, though. I'm not big on the stars, but I'll live.

Of course, since we had a brand new saddle, we had to do some racing training to break it in.














RIDE LIKE THE WIND, ADEJAAN!!!















Look at that! We even have an audience cheering us on, including a certain Orion slave girl I may or may not have bothered to kick out of the neighborhood yet. Sweet!

Here's Adejaan relaxing in his sweet new digs. I can tell he's going to be happy here, even if there isn't quite enough room for him to Gallop Around the way he'd like to.















And here's my Sim caught in a horribly saccharine moment.















You can see the horse toy in the above picture (the blue ball). I actually bought two of those things, but I must not have enough room in the backyard or something, because the horse won't play with either of them, even though he attempts to. Weird.

Here's another picture of us doing some more race training. You see that guy sitting on the ground? Yeah, we galloped right past him like five times. I guess doing homework the old-fashioned way at the dinner table isn't for him. He likes to live dangerously while he does his math problems.














"What's that, Adejaan? You're starvingly hungry because we've been training all day and you want a treat You want to win a race? I can help with that!"















A few days later, Adejaan decided to be a horse-about-town again and do some race training by himself. I wish the horse I had in real life had been like this.















Even at that hour of the night, he had an audience. I wonder if pets can be celebrities? I'll have to investigate that.

Meanwhile, here's my Sim chatting online with her mysterious romantic interest.















What? Messing around online when she should be riding? How dare she! That doesn't sound like something I'd do at all.

But what's this? There's a strangely familiar-looking dog outside clamoring to join the family! ZOMG!















What's that? Your name is Pup? Why, of course you can join the family! There's plenty of room in this huge house with a third story I don't even use!

And look at that! She even sleeps on the bed.















How cute.

Strangely enough, a strange girl showed up at my house the next day and picked out Adejaan's hooves. Weird...














This may or may not have been because I had to create a new household to create the dog, and the household had to have a person in it, so I had to merge the new household with my Sim's and then kick out the random person. No, that didn't happen at all. Either way, I have no idea why the person showed up at the house the next day. I hope she didn't end up as a street person.

It was around this time that I decided it was time for Adejaan and me to enter a competition, so we saddled up and headed through the equestion center. Here we are galloping through one of the urban parts of town, cars zooming by on both sides of the road. I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's usually not very safe to gallop a horse on pavement. Ahh, city life.















I attempted to take screenshots of the race results, but they didn't show up in the screenshots for some reason. Well, anyway, Adejaan won his first race, presumably by a huge margin. I'm guessing this was because the standings showed him in first place for the entire race. Well, cool. When we got done, we were rewarded with a Heroic Pose (and some money!)















After that, I decided to play with Pup for a while. Having the traits of Loyal, Playful, and Shy, she was up for playing, but not too much playing, because she was afraid of me enough to bite me. This was hilariously similar to reality.















I literally could not pet this dog at first, because she kept biting me. Like I said, completely parallel to real life. Let's hope this dog doesn't rupture a vertebrae and have to be put to sleep like the real one did.

After we were done playing, I decided to give Pup a good brushing.














And then my Sim went to bed. But Pup had work to do! There was a nasty Raccoon eyeing the garbage can outside. Naturally, Pup went outside and growled at it to go away.















But the Raccoon wouldn't go away, so Pup had to resort to a good-old-fashioned brawl.















Apparently one of the fight's two participants was having a good time. I'm hoping it was Pup, because seconds later she won the fight and the Raccoon ran off to cause havoc elsewhere.

In celebration, Pup went inside to guard her food bowl.














The next day, I decided to take Pup to the dog park for play. Yay!















At first, Pup was shy and reluctant to leave the lot. Again, oddly similar to real life. But I kept trying, and eventually we made our way to the dog park, where we decided to play some Fetch.















Then, of course, it was hug time.















Later that night, we were robbed by a Burglar who stole my foosball table and a laptop. Damn those burglars! Pup was no help at all. I thought she'd be able to do something to help catch the Burglar, but the thief got away too quickly despite being weighed down by an entire foosball table. Funny how these things work.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get any decent screenshots of the terrible event, so you'll just have to take my word for it. And that brings me to today's stopping point. Until next time, Simmers!