If you had Broken Steel installed, that dog very quickly turned into a freaking tank. He'd gain insane amounts of HP. It was some kind of glitch that affected all the non-humanoid followers in the game.
He was actually very useful when you got to higher levels with BS and you had to fight albino radscorpions every 10 feet. I could just let him chew the things down to very low health and then finish them off with a shotgun blast or two.
I know, I also chose the perk Puppies! but I still found him to be useless.
He always blew my cover, always got in the way in firefights and in corridors and his barking was just eardrum piercingly annoying after a while.
Not worth it to me. Never understood the fascination some have for dogs, especially emotionless and robotic pixels on a screen.
Yet some people can't play Fallout 1>New Vegas without getting some damn mutt to follow them around.
*sigh* when oh when are we gonna get something useful?
Like a Nightstalker or a Gecko.
Those I would use.