How It Works

The whole mod in one page: what drives your pets, what they do on their own, what they need from you, and how orders, homes and ownership fit together.

The core loop

Every pet runs the same simple loop. Get it right once and your pets mostly look after themselves.

So the job is mostly setting up a home with the right blocks close together, and keeping it stocked. A pet that's well looked after shows hearts now and then and grows loyal; a neglected one shows angry puffs, gets dirty, slows down (if it's starving, parched or exhausted), and can fall ill.

How fast needs change

Need	Full to empty	The pet acts on its own when…
Hunger	about 25 min	below 40%: eats from a bowl or trough, or grazes
Thirst	about 20 min	below 40%: drinks from a bowl or trough, or a pond
Hygiene	about 90 min	never fully: cats and dogs wash themselves a little now and then. Brush or wash it yourself.
Energy	about 25 min awake	below 15%, or below 60% once it's dark: goes to sleep
Bladder	fills in about 25 min	above 80%: litter box, pee pad or a trip outside
Mood	settles at about 75% while no need is low; each low need pulls it down	never: extra mood comes from you, from play, and from keeping the other needs up

Sleeping pets get hungry and thirsty, and fill their bladder, at half speed. Eating and drinking fill the bladder a little, so a well-fed dog needs to go more often: about once a Minecraft day. A ridden mount tires a bit faster; a pet sitting in a boat or minecart tires more slowly. All rates can be changed in the settings.

What a pet does on its own

About twice a second, a pet that isn't busy picks the first thing on this list that applies to it:

1. Sleep when told toYou picked Rest Here in the whistle screen.
2. Sleep when tiredTo its rest spot if you set one, otherwise a perch (parrots) or a pet bed (cats, ocelots, dogs, foxes, rabbits). Cats nap on top of a cat tree about half the time. Everyone else lies down where they are.
3. Go to the toiletCats, ocelots, dogs and foxes, once the bladder passes 80%. If there's nowhere to go, it has an accident once its bladder is full (a dog shut indoors waits by the door first).
4. A pastimeEvery now and then, by chance: a parrot flies to its perch, a cat scratches or lounges on the cat tree, cats and dogs groom themselves, kittens and puppies play, and striders, hoglins, happy ghasts and nautiluses do their own thing.
5. DrinkBelow 40% thirst: a water bowl (or water trough for farm animals), otherwise a pond, river or lake for animals that can drink from them.
6. EatBelow 40% hunger: a food bowl (or feed trough for farm animals), otherwise grass for animals that graze.

Steps 1–3 happen whatever order the pet is under. Steps 4–6 only happen while it's on Idle or Follow: a pet told to Stay or Go There will sleep where it is, but it won't walk off to eat or drink. Don't leave a pet on Stay for long.

Species pastimes

Species pastimes (strider to nautilus) only happen while the pet is Idle and not too tired. Each one cheers it up.

The four behaviours

Every pet is always in one of four behaviours. You switch between them with the Pet Whistle.

• Starting behaviour: wolves, cats, parrots and nautiluses you tame start on Follow (or Stay if they were sitting). Everything else starts on Idle.
• Vanilla sitting counts: making a tamed wolf or cat sit with a right-click sets it to Stay; standing it up sets it to Follow.
• Rest Here, Wake Up and Rest Spot are one-off orders on top of the behaviour, not behaviours of their own.
• On a lead, a pet stops whatever it was doing and simply walks with you. Tied to a fence post, it stays there like on Stay, but still goes to a bowl or trough within about 6 blocks of the post when it's hungry or thirsty. Pacing about at the post doesn't count as a walk. Ridden (horses, camels, striders, happy ghasts...), it does what you steer it to do.

Home: where an Idle pet lives

An Idle pet doesn't wander off into the wild. It has a home and stays within 12 blocks of it. If it ends up more than 16 blocks away it walks back. Its home is set to:

1. where it was standing when you set it to Idle;
2. where you let it off a lead while it's Idle;
3. its Rest Spot, if you set one while it's Idle;
4. the fence post you tie it to while it's Idle, so it stays near the post once you untie it.

Portals and other dimensions

Your pets come with you when you go through a Nether portal or an End portal, or get teleported to another dimension:

• They come along: pets on Follow within 16 blocks of where you left, and any pet on your lead, whatever its order. They arrive right next to you.
• They stay behind: pets on Idle, Stay or Go There, pets tied to a fence post or on someone else's lead, and pets in a boat or minecart or being ridden by someone else.
• Dropped off somewhere new: an Idle pet you bring somewhere by boat or minecart, like one you let off the lead, makes the place it gets out its new home.

In the new dimension a pet forgets its home, rest spot and the spot it was told to stay at, because those were in the old one. An Idle pet picks a new home where it is.

What you do by hand

Pets can't brush or wash themselves (beyond a little self-grooming), can't refill their bowls, and only you can give them a good play. The Needs & Care page has every action; the short version:

Do this	With	Helps
Pet it	Sneak + use with an empty hand (horse family and nautiluses: brush instead)	Mood
Hand-feed	Its food or a kibble, plain use (sneak + use is vanilla breeding)	Hunger Mood
Give water	Water bottle	Thirst
Groom	Pet Brush	Hygiene Mood
Wash	Water bucket, then Pet Soap while it's wet	Hygiene
Play	Pet Ball, Ball of Yarn, Feather Wand	Mood
Treat an illness	First Aid Kit	Cures it, heals 4 hearts
Walk	A lead	Mood Bladder

Just being near your pet (within 10 blocks) slowly lifts its mood too. Hands-on care also raises its loyalty, which unlocks tricks.

Ownership and multiplayer

Each pet has exactly one owner: whoever tamed it or put the Pet Collar on it. A baby born to your pets is your pet too. If two players' pets have a baby, it belongs to whoever fed the parents.

• Setting a pet free: sneak and use a Pet Collar on it, then again within 5 seconds to confirm. You get the collar back, and a vanilla-tamed animal is untamed too.
• Giving a pet away: /vanillapets transfer <pets> <player>. See Commands.
• When a pet dies you get a chat message saying how, if you're in the same dimension. (Vanilla already tells you when a named tamed pet such as a wolf or cat dies, so you don't get that one twice.)

Pets of different players can share the same bowls, beds and litter boxes. On a server, install the mod on the server and on every player's game.

Settings files

There are two small JSON files in your config folder. Both are created with the defaults the first time the game starts; a broken file is replaced with the defaults.

Every option is listed on FAQ & Settings.