I have some favorites to adopt.

Among the kittens--Bonkers and Cymmi.

Among the puppies--Maxx and Leroy.

They're Genius and Finicky. I'd hate to try training a Doofus, Pigpen pet....

I think my favorite is Bonkers.

I don't have a preference, I just think the puppies and kittens are precious and like to watch the tiny little guys romp around the yard.

The puppies and kittens

puppies and kittens, because you actually get to teach them behaviours. I didn't know that there was a such thing as learned behaviours at first and I kept on wondering why adopted pets destroyed the furniture My favorite adult dog to adopt is Moody. I have yet to experiment with the cats because I usually make them in CAS.
I learned that you have to be careful when you adopt, and your sims have to have time to undo the bad learned behaviours.

Strays, especially the old ones, because they have the lowest chances of being adopted. Doofus or genius makes no different to me: they are trained like any other pet. Love and care is all they need to become the most loyal creatures.

^ Oh yeah I forgot about them. Noodle (the elder black cat) is really cute.

Noodle and Duke are darlings!

I like to try and build up my sims' relationships with the strays and adopt them. Failing that I love the puppies and kittens - so cute! :-D I also like the Crittur household (the two dogs that you can add to a household, where one is pregnant) because they mean my sim can get a litter of puppies without spending too much time getting the relatsionship between two pets up high enough for them to breed. I wish there was a pair of cats like that as well!

I "Never" adopt my pets in the game I always create my pets, because I do not want a "Doofus" for a pet they can be just plain stupid and hard to learn or teach things at times. On top of the fact it take so long to teach them, I like the "Genius" pets I like small dogs and cats, but my "Real Love" is "Birds" I have them in my game.

I love them so much because in "real life" I have two Big female parrots I did not know when I first got my birds that they was both female, so they end up with male names "Spike & Dusty" they talk more than you or I, sometime to much.

How do you adopt strays?

You get a high relationship with them and then there's an option that says Adopt, I think.

You greet them when they pass by your house, you pick up the option to "give love" and you offer them a treat, then you stroke them, then you play a little, then again you give them a treat, and so on.

This way you are building your relation with the pet, and after a while, when you click on it, there appears the additional option "Adopt".

TY I thought some of the strays were awesome

Or If you want to cheat, when you have boolprop on (boolprop testingcheatsenabled true) shift click on your sim and select spawn... tombstone of L&D. Wait for the stray to come, and then press Add -strays name- to your family.

So if it was Noodle I wanted to adopt, I would press "Add Noodle to the family"
If there were two stray pets on the lot, let's say Noodle and Moonshine, Then it would appear as just "add to family" but press it, and it will give you the choice between Noodle or Moonshine. Note: It should be on the right side of the icons, just save your game before you do so... I done this before but I forgot if there were too things like that.

Also, note that if you make the pet selectable with boolprop, you didn't actually adopt it, and even if you save, when you load, the pet will be gone. You are only making the pet selectable during that one lot session.

Another note on how to cheat to get a stray is to make the pet selectable (with boolprop), Shift click on your sim and press spawn... then go until you see sim modder. NOTE: I've noticed that little dogs CANNOT use Sim Modder. Big Dogs CAN. MAYBE cats can. Not sure.
With the sim modder there, turn on "boolprop Controlpets on" (case sensitive?) and select the stray and do relationships.... any sims name... loves
then go back to your sim, drag the two relationship bars up, (the new relationship level will NOT be in effect until you interact with the stray, so keep that in mind) and make the stray pet unselectable then "stroke" the pet and pause the game (so the pet doesn't decide to 'leave') turn off all the boolprop, and then proceed like normal.

I prefer the Tombstone of life and death though, the sim modder one is a big hassle.
And I think it's hard to drag relationships up with boolprop on. One time I could do it. Don't know. Have to play with it some more later.

Ok - so per your comment above I placed the Crittur couple with a household.

How on earth do you get these two to eat from a dog dish?! I tried for like 5 sims days. I tried making friends first, I tried hiring a dog trainer (there was no training for "eat from dish"), I tried waiting until they were starving (red) and Sarah finally ate one time. ONCE! Then never again. All they do is knock down the garbage can, lick from dirty puddles, and beg for treats.

They were finally taken away by animal control due to poor care (I didn't save the game, then tried again with no luck). Ugh!

In another family I was able to click on the food dish and a command to "eat from dish" was an option which worked for that family's finicky cat. I had to praise and praise and praise her for eating from the dish until she ate from it on her own. I can't even get to that place with the Critturs. Help!

I don't think I've ever had that problem! Maybe you could try leaving some sim food (a couple of plates of dinner, say) on the floor, then if the dogs eat it you can scold them for eating sim food and they should then be more likely to eat from the pet dish. And eating food will stop them from starving and getting taken away!

Also, if you train a pet to "Come Here" then you can call it to eat from the pet dish (like with the cat in the other household). So you could call the pet trainer to train them to "Come Here", or have your sims train them, then you should be able to get them to eat. And then praise them when they eat from the dish, like with the cat.

If you scold them for "Being dirty" then they should stop knocking down the garbage can, or at least do it less often....

Make sure that the dish is facing the right way, too, otherwise pets can't eat from it!

Hope some of that helps! :-)

I'm with Simonut on this one. The only Maxi's pet I adopted was Bonkers (although I renamed him). I just didn't like the look of any of the dogs plus I wanted certain breeds in my game so downloaded some custom ones (male and female) and added them to a household with the intention of breeding. I know it's the long way round to getting a puppy but I preferred it that way and was actually a challenge to get the animal's relationship scores high enough that they could go and "woohoo" doggy style (oops, excuse the pun! ) to make babies. Also I wanted as little hassle training up the pets as possible so made them genius and "middling" on the other characteristics. The offspring inherited their parents' traits but I liked how they were different astrological signs.

Thanks lauratje86. I tried all of those things you mentioned above. Except leaving sims' food plates on the floor.

I thought of trying that but was worried that would take too long and they would starve before they learned the skill. I'll give that a go. I'll incorporate that with feeding them treats (just to keep them alive until the training kicks in!).

I've searched other forums and MTS site and other people seem to have the same issues with them. Turns out they were supposedly scolded by their former owners when they ate from a food dish. So it looks like I've got my work cut out for me to help them un-learn that skill.

You can feed them with treats till they learn the command "Come here".

Success!! It took me most of the day but I finally got the Critturs to eat their dog food on a regular basis. I followed lauratje86's advice and placed sims food on the ground and when they started eating my sim scolded them for eating sims food (it killed me to do that).

It actually didn't take very long for them to learn the new skill. I just had to keep my sim home from work for a day to keep reinforcing the training...but it was worth it.

Sarah also had her adorable pups: a girl and two boys: Gretchen, Forrest and Blue. Too cute!

I used to adopt kittens all the time, or at least kitten: Bonkers, because he had the closest personality to what I like. Now I either make my cats in CAS or I put in a pet shop and have my sim go make one there. Doofuses are annoying. At first when I got the game I didn't know what the difference was between them and geniuses, but I learned pretty quick when I tried to teach my doofus pet a command. I have only ever adopted a cat that was less than finicky once. I cannot stand unfinicky pets. I don't think I've ever adopted a dog before for some reason. That's weird, I never realized that. I'm just a cat person I guess. I'll have to try having a dog sometime.