Used this in combination with Better Dog Sounds. The result is an occasional little "wufwuf" at a distance that works nicely with the quieter dogs from this.
For those of you who find this mod, but agree the head shaking is too much like an ear infection, I have found a very simple solution! Basically, this mod takes the shake animation for the dog and replaces the bark idle with that animation. You can do this yourself very easily and get rid of the shake to boot! All you need is a BSA Unpacker. There's a great one on the Nexus, simple and easy to use. Just search for the BSA Unpacker.
How to:
1. When you run the exe get it to navigate to Skyrim-Animations.BSA in your Skyrim Data folder. This will open a massive list of all the vanilla animations in Skyrim.
2. Move a fraction of the way down the list to find the directory meshes/actors/canine/animations.
3. I'd recommend extracting all these animations by clicking on the first canine animation, hold shift and click the last canine animation, and then hit the extract button at the bottom of the window. Choose a place to save these and close.
4. Now you can choose from your list of animations which ones you want to replace your bark idles. I chose and recommendmt_idle.hkxand dog_spice_sit_idle (One to replace the standing bark, and one to replace the sitting bark. Some other animations in the list only animate a part of the body such as the tail or head. When these play, it causes the rest of the dog to go rigid which can cause some weird popping).
5. Copy and paste this file into your Skyrim data folder. The directory for dog animations is the same as above. ( meshes/actors/canine/animations ) If you don't have this directory, you can make it yourself inside the data folder.
6. Once your chosen animation is placed, you'll need to rename the file to be the same as what the bark idle is named. (If you've downloaded Hush Doggy, the names will match those). The main bark animations aredog_spice_bark.hkxanddog_spice_sit_bark.hkx There is also a combat/run bark animation, but I chose to leave this one be. Dogs do bark occasionally after all, specially in combat.
Once named, the chosen animation will be played instead of the bark. Because there is no bark sound file associated with the idle animations, your dog will now be silent, but not still playing the bark animation or shaking his head uncontrollably. Ahhh... peace, quiet, and immersion without the cost of your favorite companion. I'd like to ask you more saavy people to actually make a mod that does this on the nexus so people can find this fix easier (at least if it does prove to work for you like it did for me).
Congratulations on your simple and ingenious solution, Luthrael
But what ThePopeKYA has written here works absolutely well, so I guess it's really time to update your file from 10th August 2012 with replacing the dog_spice_bark.hkx with the mt_idle.hkx and the dog_spice_sit_bark.hkx with the dog_spice_sit_idle.hkx.
The instruction on how to do it is great, but it would be so much easier for all users rather to download and install the files than to tweak it on their own.
I would like so much to recommend your mod for Vilja's dog Leifur from Vilja in Skyrim and endorse of course. So if you don't mind, please make an update.
Thank you very much. You are changing the annoying dogs of Skyrim to the pleasant companions they should be.
Incidentally, two years on... I still haven't completed Skyrim because I keep modding it to fix its many issues...
Nevertheless, I'll see about updating the download I guess. Probably tomorrow. Quite frankly, the only reason I picked that head-shake one is because I was tired of finding partial animations and it was one of the few that just... worked.
And for anyone that is too lazy to do this themselves http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60520/? I extracted the original animations from the BSA and have credited this author for the idea. Got rid of the head shake, still barks when attacking or staggered, endorse Luthrael's file and kudos for the detailed instructions and Lycanthrops suggestion first of course.
I added this mod and it is obviously working but it doesn't show up in my data files in the skyrim startup screen. It has a green checkmark in NMM under mods but doesn't show up in the plugin list. Is this normal? I tried to download it again but NMM said the file already exists.
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There's a great one on the Nexus, simple and easy to use. Just search for the BSA Unpacker.
How to:
1. When you run the exe get it to navigate to Skyrim-Animations.BSA in your Skyrim Data folder. This will open a massive list of all the vanilla animations in Skyrim.
2. Move a fraction of the way down the list to find the directory meshes/actors/canine/animations.
3. I'd recommend extracting all these animations by clicking on the first canine animation, hold shift and click the last canine animation, and then hit the extract button at the bottom of the window. Choose a place to save these and close.
4. Now you can choose from your list of animations which ones you want to replace your bark idles. I chose and recommendmt_idle.hkxand dog_spice_sit_idle (One to replace the standing bark, and one to replace the sitting bark. Some other animations in the list only animate a part of the body such as the tail or head. When these play, it causes the rest of the dog to go rigid which can cause some weird popping).
5. Copy and paste this file into your Skyrim data folder. The directory for dog animations is the same as above.
( meshes/actors/canine/animations )
If you don't have this directory, you can make it yourself inside the data folder.
6. Once your chosen animation is placed, you'll need to rename the file to be the same as what the bark idle is named. (If you've downloaded Hush Doggy, the names will match those). The main bark animations aredog_spice_bark.hkxanddog_spice_sit_bark.hkx
There is also a combat/run bark animation, but I chose to leave this one be. Dogs do bark occasionally after all, specially in combat.
Once named, the chosen animation will be played instead of the bark. Because there is no bark sound file associated with the idle animations, your dog will now be silent, but not still playing the bark animation or shaking his head uncontrollably. Ahhh... peace, quiet, and immersion without the cost of your favorite companion. I'd like to ask you more saavy people to actually make a mod that does this on the nexus so people can find this fix easier (at least if it does prove to work for you like it did for me).
Let me know if this fixed it for you!
But what ThePopeKYA has written here works absolutely well, so I guess it's really time to update your file from 10th August 2012 with replacing the dog_spice_bark.hkx with the mt_idle.hkx and the dog_spice_sit_bark.hkx with the dog_spice_sit_idle.hkx.
The instruction on how to do it is great, but it would be so much easier for all users rather to download and install the files than to tweak it on their own.
I would like so much to recommend your mod for Vilja's dog Leifur from Vilja in Skyrim and endorse of course. So if you don't mind, please make an update.
Thank you very much. You are changing the annoying dogs of Skyrim to the pleasant companions they should be.
Nevertheless, I'll see about updating the download I guess. Probably tomorrow. Quite frankly, the only reason I picked that head-shake one is because I was tired of finding partial animations and it was one of the few that just... worked.
I extracted the original animations from the BSA and have credited this author for the idea. Got rid of the head shake, still barks when attacking or staggered, endorse Luthrael's file and kudos for the detailed instructions and Lycanthrops suggestion first of course.
Can you please make another mod to stop the head-shake animation with the annoying floppy lips/ears noise? Dog does it almost constantly now...
And can't find the mod "better dogs" or "turn dogs into wolf followers"
:/