This is something that has been nagging me about Fallout 4. You find a normal German Shepard. How? All the dogs in the wasteland are feral and mutated, and yet Dogmeat is perfectly normal and healthy? I know he was with the minutemen before he meets the sole survivor, did i miss some dialogue or something explaining him? Or is it just a mystery no-one has asked about yet? Maybe he's from a vault, i don't know.

he actually has a back story. Don't want to ruin anything for you if certain quests haven't been done, but check the Wikimedia page for him:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Dogmeat_(Fallout_4)

i've read through the page before posting this. I don't see anything on the page that suggests why he is not mutated in any way, since every other dog so far has been.

Edit: Now i look at it, in fallout 3 dogmeat was not mutated either. Why is it only these dogs that have no mutation?

If you avoid meeting Dogmeat you'll meet him when you decide to find Kellogg. He's a friend of Nick's. He seems to live in the doghouse on the roof of home Plate.

There are other unmutated dogs, by the way. You see them now and then. I'm not sure he's unmutated, though. He's awfully intelligent (8!) and his senses are exceptional.

Personally, I think he's from Vault K-9, full of smart dogs, and is out looking for cats and teddy bears.

Huh. i for some reason haven't seen any of these unmutated dogs.

It just really confuses me that some dogs species have managed to go 210 years without being mutated in any way. I guess a vault is the only explanation. then again, Dogmeat in fallout 3 is a descendant of dogmeat from fallout 1, which was only 100 years after the war, so maybe some vault opened back then, and thats where all these unmutated dogs are from.

also there is the junkyard dogs that Gene sells. So at least 2 variety of unmutated dogs in game.

There are unmutated dogs across the Wastelands. They are rarer than the mutated, but each game has at least one real dog (and all Dogmeats are real dogs).

Which is not surprising as not all parts of USA were nuked and irradiated (Zion being one example). Dogs that lived in less irradiated places remained mostly the same, just like the humans did.

Dogmeat is an institute synth assigned to spy on the SS. He was modeled after the SS's pre-war dog (for obvious reasons) that went missing just a few weeks before the bombs fell. Everything you say & do gets recorded, and sent directly to the institute via satellite!


You've been warned people!!


By the way, anybody got any chems I could score? It's been over 20mins since I had my last hit...

You know those chems are going to kill you some day. i did hear there was a chem stash in some old vault though...

I'm pretty sure that other than the supermutant hounds (which are altered via F.E.V), none of these dogs are truly mutated. I feel like I remember reading somewhere in one of the the games that dogs had somehow remained un-effected by the radiation. Most of the vicious dogs in the game just look like they have extreme cases of mange. Look up sarcoptic mange, most of the dogs you encounter in the wasteland look like they have this, its a disease caused by mites.

Huh. thanks for clearing that up.

Dogmeat has been in all the Fallout games starting from the first one. I think Bethesda just includes it since it's cool. Personally, I'd like to see the "pariah" dog again. For those in the know, you'll understand lol.

gunners' attack dogs aren't mutated

Just like others said, there's been lots of normal dogs in Fallout since the first one. And it's not just dogs, there are normal cats and other animals too. They are just a bit rare.

I guess i should rephrase my question to: How come the dogs and other animals haven't mutated?

There's no real logic behind it I don't think. Why are cows now brahmin and deer radstag while there are normal dogs and cats? Giant ants, roaches, flies, cazadors, and scorpions are all impossibilities due to the fact that they breathe through their skin and their surface area to volume ratio is way off for the oxygen levels in our atmosphere, and you'd have to assume the fallout universe has less oxygen due to the nuclear death of most photosynthesizing plants.

Because not every place in the world is equally irradiated. If you were in cover when the bombs fell and are not too close to ground 0, you won't mutate too much. Really, it's the same reason why not all humans are ghouls.

Cazadors (and nightstalkers) were created at Big MT so they don't count.

But yeah, Fallouts don't care much about realistically depicting the post-nuclear world (for one I'm pretty sure that it should be much greener than it is).

Well, due to the deaths of most animals and people, less oxygen would be used and less carbon dioxide made, and places like the amazon rainforest probably wouldnt have been nuked, so all the oxygen producing plants there would likely increase the amount of oxygen compared to the amount before the bombs fell. Keeping in mind there are still oxygen producing plants in fallout locations, particularly in the capital wasteland in fallout 3, when there is a grove of new trees, green leaves and everything.

200 years after bombs drop in real life there'd likely be a lot of plant life, but in the fallout universe everything is seemingly still dead. in Mothership Zeta you can see the world from orbit, the land is all dead (that was a big reveal and would likely be ignored if they wanted to make somewhere less dead in the future). if you look for realism it's unlikely that South America wouldn't have been nuked as there aren't any real targets there for the US or China (of course the fallout universe is not our own, in our world China is starting to build bases in Africa, so who knows where forces were in the fallout universe before the bombs fell) it's possible that the amazon rain forest survived, assuming it was still there before the bombs (fallout's universe doesn't seem to be all that conservation minded) who knows it may have all been ranch land by October 2077. Not saying it's not possible for oxygen levels to be higher in Fallout's 2287, it just seems like animals and bugs in the fallout world are designed based on what ever makes for an interesting setting rather than actual science.

That's like asking why aren't all the humans mutated or ghouls.

I don`t know where he is from... but he sure can have various background.

He could have released from unknown farm where they breed non-mutated dogs. lol


Maybe Bethesda intended us to make that small decision. lol




I wish I could make Dogmeat a white shepherd then I could think of him as descendant of https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1593146-dogmeat-where-did-he-come-from/s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjamZHLk5HLAhXJpx4KHUvkC_UQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FHaunting_Ground&bvm=bv.115277099,d.dmo&psig=AFQjCNGWIQweNuvmSR5cnuqAMIIFwZt5Fw&ust=1456429163284069. Lol

I hate to break it to you, but This:

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/fallout/images/a/aa/Woundeddog.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20151121044013

Isn't mange, it's a mutated dog. There is a difference between a mutant dog and a super mutant dog.

Don't listen to them, they are incorrect.

Well no, because people stayed in vaults or other safe underground places. I find it unlikely that many of those places had dogs and cats in them.

However none of the raider dogs are mutated, nor are the dog sellers dogs.

Ummm. there is difference in mutated and truly mutated? lol



It`s not like ninja turtle is truly mutated while two headed radstag is just mutated. lol