This little mod was inspired by DarkPhoenixx's Stray Dog Fix, and I have used the script included in that mod here under the consent given in the statement:

"You can use this in any of your mods, no need to ask for my permission."

The original mod basically allowed you to re-recruit dismissed Stray Dogs.

There isn't any love for Strays on the SSE Nexus, so I thought I'd improve upon the original, and upload something.

What this mod does is the same as the original - Recruit the stray as usual. If you dismiss it then it will head back to the last place where you told it to wait. This mod allows you to talk to it again (you may need to tell it to wait twice) when it sits down "waiting", you can then open the dialogue and ask it to follow you again.

I have also increased the level range on the strays from L10-25 to L10-50.

I have supplied 3 variants: Vanilla - Stray Dog, Stray Armoured Husky & Stray Death Hound.

I have made the mod to require USSEP.

The file is an .esp, but it is flagged as an .esl so it doesn't take up a mod slot.



Strays are actually World Encounters, and have always been notoriously buggy, loss of dialogue control, loss of the animal itself etc etc, see: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim_talk:Stray_Dog

I have found the mod Whistle Commands for Followers and Animal Companions by jgz to work quite well with Strays, even when you can't control them via the dialogue options.

If you are tired of losing it, and don't want to keep opening the console then you can try Get Over Here.

This mod does not (as yet) deal with any of these issues.

I have intentionally not added access to the Strays inventory, or made any other such changes; if you want this functionality there are plenty of mods out there for Meeko, Vigilance etc.

Changelog:

22/11/18 Fixed a bug with the Husky/Death Hound variants, followers using custom text.