Hello!
This is my first (published) mod and I don’t know what I’m doing.

The primary aim of this mod is to increase the effectiveness and utility of Dogmeat so he is a more viable companion, especially on more heavily modified playthroughs where his vanilla settings may not be up to par with the rest of the experience. It's a reasonably simple mod, but I have a lot to say about it, so I'm gonna break it down between a long and short version. Not everyone wants to read 3000 words, I get that, so I'll start off with the short version.

Also, sorry in advance for my lazy formatting. I mean, I’m not that sorry, but that’s the thing you’re supposed to say.

QUICK AND DIRTY TL;DR OVERVIEW

- It turns Dogmeat into a proper attack dog (as the perks suggest that he is)

- Overhauled damage (+damage/stagger on regular attack // ++damage/knockdown on power attack)

- Better Attack Dog perk (increased from ≤10% chance of cripple to a flat 75%)

- Improves his AI, adjusting his ability to assess threats and reducing aggression.

- Makes Dogmeat sneakier, and reduces his SFX volume

- Removes level cap from Dogmeat (so he can scale properly)

- Adjusts his health (lower) and speed (higher) for balance.

- Dogs can no longer open doors.

- It also doesn’t touch any other dogs with the edits.
(they still can’t open doors)

Truly a complete Dogsperience.

It uses no scripts. Install normally. Load after anything that might edit dogs.

If you want to skip the long explanation, you can go straight to the download at this point.

If you want to learn how to make changes, or how/why it does these things, read on.

THE TOO LONG, BUT DID READ ANYWAY
(because I like to talk about myself)
I made this mod, originally, for myself. I took a look at some of the problems I was having with my Dogmeat experience and tried to find ways to fix them. So, I figure that people will probably be interested for the very same reasons I made it in the first place. This mod will likely interest you if you:




WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO THOUGH?
IT FIXES THOSE THINGS.
That’s why I listed them. No, really. 
The first thing that it does is adjust his damage to be significantly more lethal, even at high level. Dogmeat’s attacks deal more damage and stagger with significant damage buffs to his power attacks, which now have added knockdown. Takedowns become much more frequent.
The limb damage of the Attack Dog perk was adjusted to reflect the threat of a trained attack dog. Now if Dogmeat bites and holds an enemy it increases the damage of crippling that limb from a pathetic 10% or less to a flat 75% chance.

The second thing it does is adjust his AI. It changes him from “aggressive” to “unaggressive” meaning he’s a good boy who is well trained enough to not START CHASING RANDOMLY AFTER RADSTAGS GAT DANGIT DOG GET BACK HERE WHAT DID I JUST SAY
It also changes him from “foolhardy”” to “brave” which affects threat assessment. He will not recklessly charge enemies who outmatch him. 

It gives him a better sneak perk, so that when he sneaks with you he isn’t constantly blowing your cover.
 It also reduces his sound FX so he sounds more like a dog and less like a wildebeest. Also makes less noise when sneaking (barking etc.)

It removes his level cap, which makes him scale properly with the player, meaning that even at level 200 he’ll still be relevant.
To balance out the scaling and the damage increase I lowered his health but increased his speed.

As a result of these things together, you will see your dog much more frequently do really cool sh*t. It’s super brutal. It causes a 200% increase in Dogmeat efficiency, and that’s a money back guarantee (if you have paid money for this you’ve made a mistake and the money back guarantee will not be honored)
I have watched my dog eat like 10x more faces since doing this edit, and I actually feel like he’s worth keeping around.
Since using this I have seen Dogmeat do kill animations I didn’t know existed and I have 1700+ hours in-game.
And, you know, he can’t open doors on his own anymore. Because he’s a dog.
And don’t tell me your dog can open doors, I don’t care. I hate your dog (I don’t, your dog is great, tell them I’m sorry)

To Recap


WHY DOES IT DO THESE THINGS?
(WARNING: This is where I talk about myself and then go on a bit of a rant)
(Did I mention I like to talk about myself?)
Every time I traveled with Dogmeat he felt like an underwhelming companion. He’s cute, and fun because y’know he’s a dog friend to follow you around. But in combat he didn’t really feel like a resilient wasteland survivor, let alone an attack dog. In the story it establishes that he’s a very capable and well-trained dog, but this didn’t seem reflected very well in the gameplay. Especially for heavily modded playthroughs. I’m a sucker for realism and immersion and I wanted an attack dog that felt like, well, an attack dog.
I’m not going to say it’s 1:1 for realism, or even that it’s necessarily the most realistic mod out there, but it feels more real, to me at least.

I wanted to create something that was realistic, and combined a lot of the essential changes that many other mods have tried to address, but I also wanted to roll as many big important changes as I could into one package to really give a well-rounded, no-conflict, complete dogsperience.
I have used a lot of great mods for dogmeat, and all of them did some great things, important things, and did things right.
But, in my experience, none of them did everything quite right.

 I have some experience with shepherds and they are certainly more than capable of killing or maiming a person. They can break bone and rend flesh and if you get attacked by a shepherd that is actually trying to do damage you’re going to be having a bad time.

They have an average raw bite force of 238 PSI which is more than enough, on its own, to break many bones. This is also not the only consideration when looking at the threat of a dog attack. When you consider momentum, hanging, shaking, lunging, leaping, and other factors, which each you are increasing the threat and damage of a trained dog attack. 

Before someone tries to push up their glasses and say “Well, actually”  and quote some data about the PSI required to typically break bone, I want you to know a few things. First, I don’t care and also shut up no one likes that. Second, I did look into this and the data does support the fact that German Shepherds are more than capable of breaking human bone. There is much more to consider than raw bite force alone. (see above)
If you’ve ever seen a German Shepherd attack someone, it is terrifying.
I actually had a spontaneous ear piercing from a German Shepherd, but that’s a story for another time probably.
(he’s a good boy, he just doesn’t know his own strength sometimes)

oh, and third, if you still wanna try to hit me with an “um, actually” you can feel free to let a full grown adult German Shepherd go full “f*ck you” on your arm and then challenge me to a fist fight, be my guest.
(I will probably also relentlessly mock you if you post sh*t like this in my comments section, so be forewarned)

Broken bones are not the only concern when considering danger, having rent meat and tendon can take you out of the fight just as much as a broken bone. A trained attack dog can disable a person and render them incapacitated or otherwise combat ineffective fairly easily.
This is one of the reasons you can find trained attack dogs, especially German Shepherds, used in military and defense roles, as well as protective civilian roles.

Sorry, I just felt I had to get that out of the way because I just know someone is gonna try to tell me that dogs aren’t actually that dangerous.

Considering that he’s a wasteland dog that has been surviving against all the threats and harshness that comes with that, I think he should be more than capable in terms of his combat abilities and general fight intelligence. I really wanted to make a mod that helped Dogmeat be the best good boy he can be, and help reflect his character in the gameplay. These changes were made with a lot of thought and a lot of love.

If you don’t like all the changes, that’s okay, I’ll walk you through how to adjust them so you can have a dog that feels right to you.

It isn’t going to change your life, but it might make your gameplay more compelling.


DISCLAIMER
this might royally f*ck up your game, but I don’t know. I can’t imagine any reason it would, but I also basically just blunder my way through modding by being extremely irresponsible with FO4edit. Seriously, it’s gross.
I have no idea what I’m doing. All I can tell you is that it works for me and it probably shouldn’t break your game. 


INSTALLATION
Install it like any other mod. It’s just an .esp so drop it in your data folder
Or, you know, just use a mod manager.

KNOWN ISSUES
This causes some problems with the “Reunions” Quest. You can disable it for that quest, or you can wait until after to install it.
You can also move the dog to where he needs to be with console commands and whatnot.
You’re a smart cookie, you’ll figure it out. 

The second issue is that he sometimes won’t follow you through doors because of aforementioned failure to door.
I know that AFT provides some ways around this, as well as the console.


MOD COMPATIBILITIES
Yeah, I have no idea. It is probably not compatible with anything that directly edits Mr. Meat.
My suggestion is to load this mod after any mods that might edit dogs.
 
Because this mod doesn’t use any scripts you should be able to use it with scripted follower mods without conflict.
Follower mods that make edits to the follower entries themselves might be a different story.
If you want to try, again, load this after.

The only follower mod that I know, for certain, works with this one is AFT by Dheuster, which I also personally recommend.
I can’t say it won’t break your game. I can’t say it will bring your loved ones back from the dead, but I can tell you that I really like it
I have found that I especially enjoy changing the follow distance of Dogmeat so he isn’t just following my crosshairs around running into mines.

If anything I do or recommend breaks your sh*t, just refer back to the “disclaimer”



WHAT IF I WANT TO MAKE CHANGES?
Please do. I probably won’t respond to any requests to change this. FO4Edit (link is below) is super easy to learn to use, and is super rewarding.
I know it can seem intimidating, but my experience has gotten so much better as I’ve learned to do my own modding.
This is a great mod to practice on, because it’s small and it’s easy to make edits to that won’t break everything.
Don’t want your dog to be killing stuff so fast? Easy fix. Want him to do even more damage? Also an easy fix.
All you gotta do is open it up in FO4Edit.


OKAY BUT HOW DO I ACTUALLY DO THAT
How to change Dogmeat’s Damage
Dogmeat’s damage is determined by two big things.
The first is in Dogmeat’s “Race” (literally called DogmeatRace under Race) his attacks are listed under “Attacks (sorted)” and you can change the values. Damage Mult multiplies damage based on its value (for example, 2.000000 would be 2x base damage)
You can also modify things like stagger and knockdown.
Look at the ATKT - Description field for the name of the attack.

The second is the “Weapon” entry. It is listed as “UnarmedDogmeat”.
You can modify the BASE DAMAGE under the DNAM -Data field (base damage is what is multiplied by the “race” Damage Mult values)
It’s just standard base damage. It should be self-explanitory.

You can also edit (or remove the entry) crDogmeatCripple if you don’t want the better Attack Dog perk and limb damage that comes with it.
(this one is a bit more complicated, I’d just remove it if you don’t want it. This is what gives a massive boost to the limb damage)


How to change the other stuff
You can also make these changes apply to raider dogs, you just need to switch the “RaiderDogRace” use UnarmedDogmeat instead of UnarmedViciousDog, which is what I switched it over to use.

You can change his aggression and confidence too. This is changed in AIDT - AI Data in the NPC section.
Aggression determines how an actor engages threats (defensively, on sight, attack neutrals, attack everything )
Confidence determines how the AI assesses threats. Jesus that’s a lot of S’s. Basically this determines whether it will charge stuff that is blatantly stronger than it, or if it will try to engage more cautiously, etc.
You can read more about those values here

If you pay attention to the color coding in FO4Edit you can actually see which entries are edited and vary from the base Fallout4.esm. It should be pretty easy to figure out as you play around with it.
I’m not going to list instructions for every little change, at this point things should be clear enough that you can make it on your own.
Most of the other stuff should be intuitive enough, if you need help there’s tons of resources

This was not a hard mod to make. I am not an exceptionally smart or gifted person. You can learn to do stuff like this.

I’ll get off my soapbox now, I just really want to see more people get into making their own edits and taking creative control over their modding.


CREDITS AND SHOUTOUTS
These mod authors all inspired/enabled this mod in some way or another.
Honestly, I had a lot of inspiration for this mod, and most of what I’m doing isn’t all that unique. It’s just unique in that it’s all slapped together in one package.
If you want to support great mod authors, go download these mods and give them an endorse. This mod probably wouldn’t exist without theirs
You don’t need to use the mods, this one makes them redundant, I just want them to get due credit for their hard work.
I mean, it’s not a requirement, you can still download this mod and no one will force you to do it, but it’d be cool of you.
This mod happened because these folks paved the way.

ElminsterAU and the xEdit Team for making FO4Edit, which they made not realizing the disgusting edits I’d use it for constantly
basically every bit of modding I’ve ever done has been with FO4Edit and I cannot thank their team enough.

aphest for Immersive Dogmeat - Smart - Silent - Sneaky (I actually use his combined pack which includes that mod)
Aphest’s mod provided the resources for the AI, scaling, and sound adjustments. Most of the changes, really.
Really, this mod wouldn’t be half as good without Aphest’s edits. I basically rolled their whole mod into this one.

UlithiumDragon for their mod Dogmeat - Doors are NOT for Dogs (No Door Opening)
I just basically straight-up snatched their edit. 100% certified blagged. They said it was fine. They’re good people.

valdacil for Everyone’s Best Friend (Dogmeat and Companion At Same Time - No Console - No Hack)
I don’t think I even use this mod anymore but it’s still downloaded for some reason and it’s a good mod

Zazuban for their mod Dogmeat - A True Companion
This is a mod that, in all honesty, I’ve never used. It seems like they had a lot of similar ideas and it provided some inspiration.

Big shout out to myself for making this mod, which I’d link to, but you’re already on the page.
did you know I made this mod?

and most of all
Credits to you, my innumerable and adoring fans
who are you? shut up, I love you 


LINKS TO MY OTHER MODS
see, if you had been paying attention you’d realize this is my first published mod. I don’t have anything to put here. Although maybe someday.
If enough people bug me about releasing my presets or something, I don’t know.
I am surprised you even read this far tbh. 

congratulations, you did it, you made it to the end

go download the mod, dingdong
p.s. Dogmeat is a very good boy