I'm thinking about trying the challenge again (I did once already, but I got fed up with it at Gen 4 for a couple of reasons), but I had a couple of questions first.
Can my founder be a townie from an existing neighborhood who has been saved to the bin, made YA, and enters the world that way (like any other sim from CAS, with no connections, skills, same starting funds, etc.)? I have one in mind whose looks and personality I'm a bit fond of. I will be playing him in a neighborhood that isn't his hometown, if that's a concern. There won't be a clone of him running around or anything.
Also, when it comes to supermaxing the riding skill from Pets, do the same rules with pets apply as far as "once they're in the household, they have to stay until they die" as they do with sims? Because training/adopting/selling horses seems to be big part of that career, and to supermax it you need to adopt 3 wild horses. I wanted to be sure before I tackled that, as I love the riding skill and I'd like to use it as one of my supermaxes if I can.