Actually, it's considered a good business practice if you can never say "no" to anyone. It takes some creative thinking and writing sometimes, but it can be quite effective when dealing with customers, both internal and external.
I know. And I'm glad to see that EA is using it here in a good way.
You also can use it to avoid the question or confuse the costomer, which they didn't here, fortuniatly.
So, after reading all this info I see a bit of strategy coming together in this game according to adding pets in your household.
With sims you could specify some in being the money makers (writing painting, or having a job), others as the food preparations (cooking, gardening and or fishing skill), another in collecting stuff and another in improving the household (cleaning and reparing things).
Now with pets I see at least that you can train and (perhaps/hopefully) breed a dog to be the ultimate collector in gems, metals, animals and whatever more.
And a horse can be trained or even breed into a money maker, with jumping and all that stuff, compared with a high skilled riding sim.
Now I can't wait to see where we can train the cats for.