Troublesome Pet

Owning a pet is a big responsibility, and oftentimes, the fur babies' animal instincts can cause their owner a lot of grief. They'd poo and pee all over the place, chew on/scratch furniture, steal food, eat homework, destroy gardens, get into fights with the neighbor's pets, attack neighbors, or even attack their own humans. Whenever they get taken out for walks, they'd almost certainly run off and drag their owner behind them. Particularly, rowdy pets may even cause usually pet-friendly establishments to declare No Animals Allowed.

Of course, the pet's troublesome behaviour is rarely born of malice. Oftentimes, they're a fun-loving and affectionate animal whose excess energy and enthusiasm don't align with their owner's propriety standards, and they're still a Loyal Animal Companion despite their penchant for mischief. This is especially true when the pet is still basically a toddler/child, and would eventually learn to behave better as they mature. If not, the exasperated owner may try Training the Pet to behave, with varying degrees of success.

For this reason, the owners usually still love the pet and treat them as an important, if maddening, part of their family. However, if the pet's behaviour becomes much more troublesome than the owners are willing to handle, the pet may eventually get sent away.

If the pet is a Nearly Normal Animal or a Civilized Animal, they may show Jerk with a Heart of Gold characteristics, as they deliberately cause trouble for their owners and share a Vitriolic Best Buds relationship with them.

Not to be confused with Troublemaking New Pet, when a character gets a new pet to accompany an existing one, only for the former to start wreaking havoc and get the older pet in trouble—although the two may overlap.

Compare/contrast Apathetic Pet, who just doesn't care about their owner.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Inubaka: While the bulk of the series deals with how dogs can misbehave when their owners don't train/coach them properly, Lupin is by far the most prone to get into trouble. Basically a canine version of an Idiot Hero and Casanova Wannabe, Lupin frequently embarrasses Suguri by trying to go after female dogs even outside mating season, stealing Suguri's underwear, snatching treats from other dogs, and at one point breaking a dog treat dispenser because he wants to get all the food inside.
• Pokémon: The Original Series:
  • In the very first episode, Pikachu laughs at Ash's misfortunes, disobeys him, and is prone to zapping him with his electric powers. He does become nicer after Ash saves him from a flock of Spearow.
  • After Charmeleon becomes Charizard, he becomes more aggressive and is prone to taking his anger out on Ash. He also ignores his battle commands, which costs him the victory of winning the League.

Comic Strips

• Big Nate: Zigzagged with Spitsy. He's not actually Nate's dog, although Nate dog-sits him frequently enough that he might as well be. He's not that mischievous either, but he's so hopelessly stupid that he causes Nate no end of embarrassment and grief by being bullied by local squirrels, getting his tongue stuck on ice, etc.
• In Dennis the Menace and Ruff, Dennis loves Ruff, his pet dog, but both his parents and his next-door neighbor Mr. Wilson see Ruff as a nuisance because Ruff buries his bones in the Mitchells' backyard, leaves muddy pawprints in the Mitchells' house, and licks the dishes. Dennis has to teach Ruff to behave or his parents will send him away. Dennis trains Ruff to save a baby from drowning by practicing with his teddy bear, and after eventually teaching Ruff to behave, Henry reluctantly lets Ruff join them in a party at Uncle Dick's house. On their way to the party, Dennis is sure that his parents will send Ruff away after Ruff snatches a police officer's hat. At the party, Dennis' two-year-old cousin Billy falls into a pond and is in danger of drowning. Ruff sees Billy and rescues him just as Dennis taught him, is praised as a hero, and Henry decides never to send Ruff away after his heroic deed.
• Garfield: Garfield is known for being quite a trickster towards both Jon and Odie. He frequently hogs their food and coffee, among other things.
• Heathcliff: Heathcliff himself frequently knocks over trash cans, terrorizes the neighbors, and hogs the family's snacks.
• Marmaduke is a Big Eater, seems to be quite the ladies' man (or dog) and sometimes even manages to throw wild parties while the Winslows are away.
• Peanuts: Snoopy's Cloudcuckoolander tendencies (and tendencies to mess with the neighbors, like when he steals Linus's Security Blanket) can be embarrassing to Charlie Brown, who often wonders, "Why can't I have a normal dog like everybody else?"

Films — Animation

• Aladdin: Abu, being a greedy Mischief-Making Monkey who gets easily distracted by shiny objects, frequently gets his owner Aladdin into trouble by stealing stuff even if Aladdin himself doesn't need it. For instance:
  • In the first animated film, right after Aladdin narrowly gets Princess Jasmine out of trouble with an angry fruit vendor who was going to cut off her hand for taking an apple without paying for it, Abu bows respectfully to the vendor — and spills three apples that he stuffed into his little vest earlier, forcing the heroes to run for it. Later on in the film, he gets Aladdin in trouble again by trying to steal a gigantic ruby that he sees in the Cave of Wonders, despite the Cave making it clear that the Lamp is the only treasure they're allowed to touch. Because of this, the Cave flips its lid and traps both Abu and Aladdin inside itself, after nearly drowning them in lava.
  • In the live-action remake, Abu adds a new blunder to his list, when he impulsively steals Jasmine's bracelet (a Tragic Keepsake from the Princess' late mother), causing her to blame Aladdin for it, and briefly souring her on him. Luckily, he does manage to clear it up to her later... right before Jafar kidnaps both of them into finding the Lamp for him.
• Lilo & Stitch: Stitch is programmed to demolish anything he sees, so when Lilo and Nani first adopt him, he's crude, aggressive, and frequently ruins their belongings. Though he overcomes this when he grows to care about Lilo, it is clear that he can still be bratty and destructive at times. An example of this is in "Bad Stitch" in Lilo & Stitch: The Series, when his temper goes out of control.

Films — Live-Action

• Bruce Almighty: Bruce's dog is always peeing on his furniture. Eventually, he manages to train the dog to pee outside by bringing his furniture outside.
• Marley & Me: John Grogan's Labrador Retriever, Marley, is very destructive and poorly behaved, and his owner describes him as the world's worst dog. It has been suggested that Marley suffers from a mental illness that makes him much more hyperactive than other dogs, and he's otherwise a loyal and loving dog to his family.

Literature

• Bad Kitty: Kitty isn't called "Bad Kitty" for nothing; she frequently destroys property, will go on a rampage at the slightest provocation (often attacking the unseen owner in the process), and bullies Puppy.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid:
  • In Dog Days, Greg's father Frank decides to get a new dog, to the rest of his family's displeasure. The dog, named Sweetie by Susan, is lazy and is particularly a nuisance to Greg: he sleeps in the middle of Greg's bed — leaving little room for Greg to sleep on — then uses Greg's face as a launch pad when he gets up; when not on the bed, Sweetie likes to laze around on the living room couch, which prevents people from sitting down and watch TV, then bark at the TV unless a particular commercial is playing. He is eventually given away to Greg's grandmother.
  • When the Heffleys adopt a pet piglet in The Long Haul, he proves to be quite a nuisance when he nearly crawls out the car window and later raids the food in the minifridge. He only gets more mischievous as the books go on; he becomes more intelligent and becomes more prone to sneaking out. In The Meltdown, he begins to destroy things when he's angry with the Heffleys for not taking him on their vacation with them. Because of this, they send him to an obedience school, only for him to escape, and he is never seen again.
• Dirty Bertie: Whiffer, the Burnses' dog, is a troublemaker: he Hates Baths, farts too much, once pooped on the neighbours' lawn, and often steals food.
• Hank the Cowdog: The titular canine has a good heart, but a mixture of his pride and lower intelligence than he thinks he has causes him to get into lots of trouble, ranging from swimming in the septic tank, to getting bitten by a rattlesnake right before the cowboys leave on a business trip, or eating and dispelling forty bucks worth of donuts.
• Henry Huggins: Henry's dog Ribsy is often considered a nuisance by the neighbors and causes all sorts of trouble for Henry by chasing his neighbor's cat, ruining their flowerbeds, stealing food and newspapers, etc. This becomes a major plot point in Henry and Ribsy, where Mr. Huggins's requirement for allowing Henry to join his fishing trip is to keep Ribsy out of trouble for two weeks.
• How to Train Your Dragon: Toothless is Hiccup and Stoick's pet dragon, but he often annoys them by chewing on things, pooing in the house, burning things with his fire breath, or stealing.
• Milly, Molly:
  • Milly's cat Marmalade is often a nuisance because she knocks things over, sleeps in Milly's father's chair despite not being allowed to, etc.
  • While Molly's cat Tom Cat isn't as much of a troublemaker as Marmalade, he still has his moments, such as when he pooped under her bed due to jealousy of the injured cat the Horrens were looking after in "Sooty", and when he and Marmalade both broke Mr. Limpy's vase in "Mr. Limpy's Vase".
  • Alf's dog Puddles is so named because of his annoying habit of peeing on things.
  • Harry's pet mice Brian and Brioni often annoy, or even scare, other characters because they keep trying to escape from their cage.
  • In "Beaky", Milly tries to adopt a duck named Beaky but is not allowed to keep the duck, since Beaky isn't house trained and keeps chasing Marmalade the cat.
  • In "Bunt-Me-Not", Farmer Hegardy adopts the eponymous goat, but he proves to be a nuisance due to his habit of bunting people. Luckily, however, Hegardy already has a goat, Nibbles, who teaches Bunt-Me-Not manners.
• Mog: Downplayed for the eponymous cat. She never means to do harm, but she often tramples the flowers in the window box because she forgets she has a cat flap, she sometimes blocks the TV, and she hates taking pills.
• In the Oh No My Dinosaur series of books, the main character is a five-year-old boy with a pet dinosaur named Ziggy. In each book, Ziggy causes some new problem — for instance, in "Oh No! My Dinosaur Found His Roar!", he develops the bad habit of roaring when he's angry.
• In the kids' book Some Swell Pup, or, Are You Sure You Want a Dog?, two children who appear to live alone adopt a puppy. However, the puppy is annoying — she's not housebroken and chews on everything. An anthropomorphic dog teaches them the Hard Truth Aesop that she's too young to be trained now, but that these behaviours are just a phase.
• Walter the Farting Dog: Downplayed with Walter the eponymous dog, as he's never intentionally malicious, but his Gasshole tendencies frequently annoy his owners (though, on more than one occasion, he has saved the day with his flatulence).
• In the kids' book Your Dog is Not a Scientist, the protagonist, a young girl, has a dog named Renzo. However, he often causes her trouble by doing things to her science projects like eating them or peeing on them, causing her neighbour boy to tease her about Renzo being dumb.
• The Familiar: The main storyline is built on (a supernatural version of) this trope. Xanther finds and keeps a kitten and with it comes a whole lot of Mind Screw. Everyone but Xanther finds the kitten very creepy. First of all, the Ibrahim family soon finds out that, despite looking like a kitten, the cat is actually very old and not a kitten at all. Then terrifying supernatural things start to happen around the family, which they feel are caused by the kitten. Then Xanther starts getting physically ill whenever she's not with the cat, so has to stay by its side. And all of this is not even getting into the fact that, as seen in Jingjing's storyline, before coming to Xanther the kitten was already causing trouble to "auntie" and Jingjing, and was universally feared in Singapore as well, before it unexplainably "teleported" itself from Singapore to L.A....

Live-Action TV

• 3rd Rock from the Sun: When Dick gifts Mary a Golden Retriever, it quickly goes pear-shaped, as the dog likes to dry hump. A lot. That's not even the worst of its qualities either.
• America's Got Talent: Season 18's Adrian Stoica and Hurricane's acts mostly involve slapstick comedy, with Hurricane acting as The Prankster to her owner:
  • In the auditions, Hurricane yanks Adrian off the bed, steals the remote when he's trying to watch TV, pulls away the covers while he's getting changed, steals his hat, then knocks him on the floor when he tries to get it back.
  • In the quarterfinals, Hurricane wants to play catch while Adrian is gardening, and she tries to get his attention by pulling at his gardening hose and tangling him in it, knocking over the trash can he's using to prune some bushes, then finally knocking him into the can, before Adrian finally relents and agrees to play with her.
  • In the Finale performance featuring chef Cat Cora, Hurricane continually disrupts Adrian's cooking by eating his carrot, dropping a ladle into his sauce, knocking his hand while he's adding ingredients to make him spill his peas, switching his salt with sugar, stealing his tongs when he's about to plate his dish, then knocking him into the counter after he manages to snatch back the tongs, causing him to spill his dish all over the kitchen.
• Friends: In "The One with the Ball", Rachel buys a Sphinx cat, expecting it to have the sweet personality of the one her grandmother had. However, Mrs. Whiskerton hisses at whoever approaches her and scratches Rachel.
• Animal training shows such as It's Me or the Dog and My Cat from Hell are focused on training troublesome pets that have caused a variety of problems for their owners. More often than not, the problem stems from the owner, who doesn't understand the nature of the breed of dog or cat they got and/or has been lax in handling them.
• Odd Squad: The first and only appearance of Whoops, Oprah's dog from "Puppet Show", involves him snatching Oscar's bone-shaped gadget from his hands, which is needed to turn everyone back into humans. After a long chase through Headquarters, Otto, knowing that Whoops will only give up the bone if he has something else to chew on, offers himself as a sacrifice and tells Olive to throw him, but due to having been turned into a puppet, it has little effect. It takes Oprah giving Whoops a juice box for him to finally give up the gadget.
• In the Space Cases episode "All You Can Eaty", Rosie's new pet Eaty is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, devouring everything it can get its hands on, including parts of the Christa.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: While Spot, Data's cat, doesn't cause trouble when he's looking after him, he's annoyed other people who've tried to pet-sit him. Spot has coughed up a hairball in Geordi's quarters and broken his vase, and scratched Riker.

Music

• Songdrops: In "My Pet Monster", the singer admits that sometimes he doesn't even know why he and his pet monster get along. The monster is invisible except on Halloween and steals food, so he often gets his owner in trouble because his parents think he's imaginary.

Puppet Shows

• In The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, the Gink is a raucous, messy pet with a lot of special needs, and acquiring one upends Eliza Jane's whole life.

Video Games

• Fire Emblem Fates: Sophie's horse Avel is a Moody Mount who is prone to biting and throwing her off him, except during battles.

Webcomics

• Tim And Bash: Tim has a baby dragon named Bash as a pet, who often annoys him by stealing things (especially if they're shiny), burning things with his fire breath, and clawing his way up Tim's back (since he hasn't learnt to fly yet).

Western Animation

• Amphibia: In "The Domino Effect", Anne rescues a caterpillar that reminds her of her pet cat back home. After taking her back to the house, Anne finds out that wild caterpillars are much more aggressive and destructive, and it only gets worse when it transforms into a giant, ravenous moth.
• Arthur: In "Arthur's New Puppy", Pal the eponymous puppy is initially quite the nuisance. He keeps peeing on the rug, keeps the family up with his barking, and chews on everything he sees. Arthur fixes this by teaching him to behave himself, and he becomes more obedient as he gets older.
• Big City Greens: “Cheap Snake” sees Cricket impulsively buying a python, not taking into account that he has no idea how to care for a large, aggressive reptile. The snake causes a lot of damage and even swallows several of the farm animals before Cricket forces him to cough them up. In the end, he gives the snake to Remy, who has the knowledge, space, and money to properly care for it.
• The Casagrandes: In "My Fair Cat Lady", Adelaide tries to train the aggressive clowder of stray cats. However, she only teaches them to behave to earn fish, so when their new owners don't have fish, the cats become aggressive again and the owners give them up.
• Futurama: Nibbler, Leela's pet alien, often annoys the other characters by eating random objects.
• Hailey's On It!: In "The Flamingo Must Flamin-Go", Hailey adopts Frank, an overly affectionate flamingo that molts constantly, periodically coughs up slimy featgerballs, and goes into a feeding frenzy whenever it smells shrimp. Unlike most examples, Hailey actually keeps Frank for the rest of the series.
• Handy Manny:
  • One episode involves one of Manny's friends getting a chihuahua who keeps stealing socks.
  • Another episode involves one of Manny's friends getting a rooster who keeps crowing at night, and Manny tries to stop him from doing so.
• Little Princess: While Scruff and Puss don't usually cause mischief, this is played straight with Sheepy, the sheep who the Princess tries to keep in "I Want My Sheep". He steals food, poops on the floor, and leaves his wool everywhere.
• The Loud House:
  • Downplayed for the Loud family pets. They sometimes cause trouble, such as conspiring to steal food or leaving droppings, however more often than not they're portrayed as having a loving relationship with the Louds.
  • One of the McBrides' cats, Cleopawtra, is sometimes aggressive, and "April Fools Rules" shows that she's sometimes put in timeout for it. While their other cat, Nepurrtiti, isn't usually a troublemaker, Luna does have a hard time trying to pet-sit both cats in "A Purrfect Gig".
  • The Casagrandes' parrot Sergio is often a nuisance to them because he can talk and he's often rude and he throws nighttime rave parties.
  • In "Training Day", Stella adopts a rabbit named Jazzy, who does all kinds of bad acts, like peeing on things and chewing things up. It turns out to be because he missed his brother Snazzy, so when Stella adopts both rabbits, they stop causing trouble.
• Martha Speaks:
  • Downplayed for Skits, the Lorraines' other dog besides Martha. While he's not normally annoying, he does have one bad habit, which is a tendency to jump up. This was a plot point in "Skits Behaves", in which they tried to teach him not to.
  • Justified for Dynamo, the Boxwoods' Robot Dog, who was specifically programmed to annoy people if not given enough attention (usually by circling and repeating, "Let us play!" or "Play with me, please play with me!").
• Muppet Babies: Invoked in "Puppy for a Day". The kids want to prove to Miss Nanny that they're responsible enough for a dog, so they have Rizzo the Rat pretend to be a puppy. He causes some trouble for them, such as dragging Summer through various locations when they go for a walk and eating too much pizza. By the end of it, the kids admit that having a dog is more trouble than it's worth.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Fluttershy's pet rabbit Angel is quite defiant, grumpy, and a Picky Eater.
• PAW Patrol: Sweetie is the Princess of Barkingburg's pet dog, but she's not just a troublemaker, she's an outright Enfant Terrible. She is determined to usurp the Princess's royalty, and most of her appearances have her attempting to steal all the power.
• The Powerpuff Girls: In "Mr. Mojo's Rising", it's revealed that before Mojo became an Uplifted Animal, he was Professor Utonium's pet monkey who frequently tore through his lab and smashed his inventions.
• The Real Ghostbusters: Slimer is a ghost who the eponymous Ghostbusters keep as a pet, and he's often a handful — he leaves Ectoplasm everywhere, eats a lot, and likes to randomly hug and kiss people.
• Rugrats (1991):
  • In "Spike Runs Away", Didi adopts a Psycho Poodle named Cuddles to replace Spike after he's gone missing. She turns out to have an Ironic Name; she bites and growls at people, chews up Tommy's toys, and steals snacks. It isn't long before Didi gives her back to her original owner. Tommy sums her up best in this line:
    "Chuckie, I knew Spike! Spike was a friend of mine, and let me tell you something, that poople is no Spike!"
  • Spike and Fifi's son Spiffy is quite the mischievous puppy; in his debut episode, "A Tale of Two Puppies", he tends to nip at people playfully and tear through the house. When Lou tries to teach him tricks in "Trading Phil", Dil turns out to be better at obeying his commands than Spiffy.
• The Simpsons: Santa's Little Helper is not the brightest bulb in the box. He'll eat whatever is in sight, frequently destroy items around the Simpsons' household due to his sheer size, and rarely obey commands. One particularly notable example is in "Bart's Dog Gets an F", where SLH destroys a precious family heirloom, which forces him to go to obedience school. He (barely) passes, but it doesn't take very long for things to go back to square one, as SLH apparently bit Bart shortly after graduation. Homer didn't mind, though.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: In "Dumped", Gary runs away to live with Patrick instead of SpongeBob, who then adopts another snail named Larry. However, he eventually gives Larry up, because he's grumpy, doesn't like his food, and steals SpongeBob's bed.