I feel like it could feasibly play out as a pets update if they added special a food bowl item you can use as the “beacon” for your pet to know what radius to keep within. You could have different tiers of bowls to upgrade to a larger block radius such as wooden pet bowl, iron pet bowl, gold pet bowl, etc; each offering a “meandering range” of 10, 15, 25 respectively. The bowl would be for any tamed pet bound by the type of food put in such as meat for dogs, fish for cats, seeds for parrots. 1/2
For instance you could have 3 dogs bound to 1 bowl if you put meat in it. If you have 4 cats roaming around your base and put down an iron bowl with fish, the 4 cats will have a roaming area of 15 in my idea. This would be such a great update to have and i think mojang could pull it off