Ball - Introduction and Backstory

After finishing Sue Shi's challenge, I decided to give the Chewy Ball: Stunt Double challenge a try. The target for this challenge is a dog, Chewy Ball, who lives with Crystal Ball. The objectives involve getting him getting him a pet job in the Showbiz career and getting him promoted to Stunt Double as well as teaching him a few specific learned behaviors. I had tried pets a little bit after the Pets expansion came out, but hadn't really done anything with them since then, so I thought I'd give them another try. Before I get into their story, let me introduce you to them.

Crystal Ball Aspiration: Knowledge LTW: Max out 7 Skills Zodiac: Aries Hobby: Sports Turn Ons: Fitness, Swim Wear Turn Off: Stink Personality: 5 Neat, 6 Outgoing, 6 Active, 5 Playful, 3 Nice Badges: Gardening - Gold

Things were easy enough on this lot for awhile. Crystal didn't have any trouble finding a job for Chewy in the showbiz career, and since she didn't work herself, and had plenty of money for the time being, she had plenty of time to teach him the commands he needed for promotions and to train him in learned behaviors. Once he had achieved the top of his career, which didn't take very long, I decided to try out having some puppies while I was working on finishing his other training, so I had Crystal call the pet adoption agency and adopt Lulu to be a mate for Chewy.

Chewy and Lulu got along well, and within only a day or two I was able to send them to the doghouse to make some puppies. When Lulu gave birth, she had 3 puppies: Dewey (female), Huey (male) and Luey (male). Here's a look at their personalities:

Things in the house got interesting in a hurry with 2 dogs and 3 puppies to keep up with. It was around this time that I built the first expansion to the house to create a bigger room just for the dog bowls and some chew bones behind the kitchen, since it quickly became apparent I was going to need to have several bowls to make sure there was always one filled and available when dog or puppy got hungry. Housebreaking was a very hit or miss affair, mostly miss, as I didn't always see the "accident" occurring to know which one did it and scold them for it to try to get them all trained to go outside. In fact, by the time I finished playing this lot I still hadn't gotten them all fully housebroken, though they were doing a lot better by that point. Here's a group collage of all the dogs after the puppies had all grown to adult. I should note that all of the pups grew up looking exactly like Chewy, so I eventually had to change their appearances and add markings to them so I could tell them apart. I tried to stay with colorations that would be reasonable given the parents though.

It was around this time, when the puppies were still puppies, that I decided that Crystal could probably use some sim companionship too instead of only having the dogs for company. Since she didn't have a lot of time or energy to go out looking for someone, I decided I'd take the quick route and had her call the matchmaker for a blind date. I was hoping to get someone who'd be a good husband for her, but instead the gypsy set her up with Dan Druff who was already part of another challenge I had yet to do and so could not be moved away from the lot he was on. I'll be telling you more about him soon in another post, but for now, here's a quick look at him:

Crystal has a 2 bolt attraction for Dan, so their date went well. They got along so well that it wasn't long before ACR was taking hold of them and sending them to the bedroom where fireworks were seen...and chimes were heard. A few days later, Crystal went into labor, and I chose the "random babies" option on the Triplets & Quads screen. Up comes the screen that told me that TWO new babies were on the way. Ouch, twins...well, ok, we can handle this. Crystal proceeds to have the babies, delivering the first, setting it on the floor and holding her belly before spinning and delivering the second. But then, instead of the name choosing screen coming up, she proceeds to put that baby on the floor. Um, what? Oh no. Yep. Moments later she's giving birth to baby number 3, and I'm just praying she doesn't immediately lay that one down. Thankfully she didn't. All of the puppies had grown up to adult in the meantime, so I now have 5 dogs, triplet infant girls and one adult sim on the lot. Let the fun begin.

One of the first things I did after adding more cribs to the nursery I'd built, was to call a nanny over to help with the babies. For the first day or two I kept a nanny there almost around the clock to help out, or to mostly leave the baby-care to them, but there were periods where one nanny's shift would end and it would take me a bit to get another one called over. After a couple days of this, however, I decided to give it a go to see if Crystal could manage on her own, and it turned out she could. Once the girls all grew up to toddler it got a little bit easier...and a little bit crazier. With all the dogs in the house, there was always dog food down at least that the girls could eat if they were really hungry, though I did my best to keep them fed with bottles and smart milk instead of leaving them to eat kibble all the time. There were also plenty of pet beds around that they could crawl onto to sleep when they got tired enough, and since their energy refreshes a lot slower when they're sleeping on a pet bed, it helped to space out when one of them would need the potty, or fed, or some time with mommy to learn the toddler skills. I believe I managed to teach all of them all of the toddler skills, though I don't think I made it to doing the nursery rhyme.

I think it was around the time of playing this lot that I started having trouble with trying to teach a nursery rhyme...the parent would be singing, and the progress bar would be over the kid's head, but the progress would never go up, or would only go up very very very slowly. So I sort of gave up on that one for now until I can figure out what the problem is. It was sometime during their toddlerhood, or perhaps it was earlier, I forget, that I finally managed to get Chewy fully trained to not use sim beds and officially finished the challenge. I was having fun with the house though, so I kept playing them for ahwile after finishing it. I wanted to at least get all the girls through the crazy toddler years so I wouldn't have that to come back to in future.

As all toddlers do, the girls did eventually grow up to child. Here's a look at them now:

	Darice Ball Zodiac: Pisces Hobby: Unknown Personality: Neat 5, Outgoing 7, Active 8, Playful 3, Nice 8
	Darla Ball Zodiac: Aries Hobby: Unknown Personality: 6 Neat, 10 Outgoing, 6 Active, 5 Playful, 3 Nice
	Doreen Ball Zodiac: Virgo Hobby: Unknown Personality: 10 Neat, 1 Outgoing, 8 Active, 8 Playful, 1 Nice

And a peek at how they looked along the way:

Darice

Darla

Doreen

That's pretty much where I left off with this lot, with the girls all just grown up to child, all of the dogs employed and bringing in decent money, and with things hopefully to soon get a lot less chaotic around the house. Maybe Crystal will eventually get enough time to be able to work toward her LTW of maxing all her skills. I'd like to breed further generations of the dogs, to keep Chewy's line going, but I'm not sure yet how to handle that. There's currently not room enough on the lot to add another unrelated dog for one of Chewy and Lulu's "kids" to have a mate and be able to breed. I could add another dog (I think) but then there wouldn't be any room for them to be able to have puppies. I imagine I'll eventually have to give a couple of them away, even though I don't really want to. I don't think Chewy or Lulu will die before the others are too old for one of them to have pups of their own, but maybe some kibble of life would help that. Or something. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment on this post about it.

Here's a final look at the lot the way it stands now