If strays that are adoptable but cannot be adopted due to a full house of sims, and the strays walk off the lot.. do they ever return? I have an old sim that has a good bond with a stray dog and this sim keeps rolling wants to treat this particular stray that walked away because there wasn't enough room to adopt. Once strays leave the lot are they magically vaporized from ever reappearing? Is there some way to find/contact/hack to get them back on the lot/adoptable after there's enough space/a sim left?

The stray still exists and they will probably come back at some point - but when or how often they return is random. You can summon them to the lot if you have a mod which allows you to summon pets.

Note that occasionally, when a stray pet is summoned onto the lot, it might immediately leave. Just try again in an hour or so.

You need a larger household mod so that you don't run into the not enough room problem.

What mod works best for summoning pets? Do you use More walkbys every day hack? Maybe the Pet Teleporter (in ChristianLovModCollection here)? Webster is the stray dog I would like to summon back.

I use Inge's teleporter. The pet might be a bit hard to find in the pie menus because the family name is randomized.

I think SimWardrobe's visual teleporter (link in my signature - should be under Other Objects) also works for pets. It'd probably be easier as it uses the phone UI with the thumbnails and such. It's a little yellow vase and appears under Misc/Misc.

I use InSim DEST, though I don't often need to summon pets.

I use Inge's teleporter.

Also if you haven't adopted a stray before the best way is to vary the actions and do them one after the other canceling them out quickly, don't wait for them to run the fall course or the dog will leave before you can adopt him. I've adopted heaps of pets over the years.

[Solved] Thx all! I've used Inge's shrub teleporter before. Just for shatz n giggles I tried out ChristianLov's Pet Teleporter in the collection above.. seems to work out well/not buggy AFAIK. I like the Korean art hanging object with pie menu options -very easy to use and it pulls up a menu where you can see whichever animals thumbnail.

Inge's teleporter for AL is a white cat sculpture. I have one by every sim house's front door. I use DO's Unlimited sims to go beyond the 8 sim limit. On the teleporter menu the strays will all be in one 'family' with a random name. There will be other names for townie groups. It doesn't take long to click each name that does not belong to one of your families to find the one that is all pets.