Smart Pets
by ERTZ
Smart Pets lets players turn tamed wolves and cats into companions that respond to a short set of right-click commands, with no extra menus to learn.
What it does
Tamed dogs and cats are controlled by right-clicking them with an empty hand, which cycles through five command modes: Follow Close, Follow Far, Stay, Guard Area and Return Home. Follow Close keeps the pet 2 to 4 blocks to the side, while Follow Far allows 8 to 12 blocks of space. Stay holds the pet in place, and Guard Area anchors it to the spot where it is standing so it defends that position. Return Home walks the pet back to a saved home.
A home is set by sneaking and right-clicking a pet with an empty hand, and the spot is remembered across world reloads. Guarding dogs attack hostile mobs that enter their radius and then return to their post once the fight is over. Tamed dogs collect nearby dropped items on their own and hand them directly to the player's inventory. Holding an item while right-clicking performs the normal vanilla action instead.
Smart Pets is a server-side only mod, so players join without installing anything. It is published for Fabric only, for Minecraft 1.21.11, under the MIT License, and it is not open source. Commands, distances and radii can be tuned in a simple JSON configuration file.
Key features
Five command modes
Empty-hand right-click cycles a tamed pet through Follow Close, Follow Far, Stay, Guard Area and Return Home.
Home and return
Sneak and right-click sets a pet's home, which is kept after world reloads, and Return Home walks the pet back to it.
Guard mode
Dogs can gather items on the ground near them and place those into the player's inventory, which helps after mining or when running mob farms.
Auto-fetch dropped items
After a guarding dog fights off hostile mobs that come within its radius, it heads back to the post it was assigned.
Smart pathfinding
Pets that fall too far behind teleport back toward their owner, so a pet is rarely lost.
Compatibility
Latest build for each game version and loader.
Only full game releases are shown. This mod publishes no snapshot builds.
How it compares
Smart Pets is server-side only, so players need nothing installed, and it is published for 1.21.11. PetSys is also server-side only, under the Apache License 2.0, with files for 1.20.6 – 26.2. Whistle Mod runs on the client and server together and covers 1.21.1 – 1.21.11, while Smart Pet AI is client and server, open source under the MIT License and built for 1.20.1 only.
| Mod | Loaders | Game versions | Environment | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smart Pets | Fabric | 1.21.11 | Server-side only | 2026-06-20 |
| PetSys | Fabric | 1.20.6 – 26.2 | Server-side only | 2026-08-05 |
| Whistle Mod | Fabric | 1.21.1 – 1.21.11 | Client and server | 2026-02-06 |
| Smart Pet AI | Fabric | 1.20.1 | Client and server | 2026-07-19 |
Questions
Does Smart Pets need to be installed on the client?
Which loader and version does Smart Pets support?
How are pets set to guard a spot?
In the catalog
Smart Pets is one of 8,499 Technology mods on ModsFinder, and one of 4,201 Technology mods for Fabric. 19,862 mods support Minecraft 1.21.11.
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What the author says
Smart Pets Tamed wolves and cats are loyal, but not very useful. Smart Pets turns them into real companions you can actually command, with a dead-simple control scheme: just right-click your pet. No commands to memorize, no extra items, no menus. Features Follow Close — sticks to your side (2–4 blocks) Follow Far —…
Official listing
- Modrinth page
- modrinth.com/mod/smart-pets
- Owner
- ERTZ
- Published
- 2026-06-20
- Updated on Modrinth
- 2026-06-20
- Facts verified
- 2026-10-15