I very quickly relegate Dogmeat to Sanctuary - it just hurts my soul when he's trying to get up and can't.
Started another playthrough last week, this time as the female. That chick has a very sexy voice. However, I started on Survival mode and had to give up that shit. Had to replay way too much, but the kicker was that my Deadly Gunners/Deadly Raiders/Modern Weapons mods made it far too deadly. Took me about four hours to get all the way through Concord and a good hour to clean out Satellite Station Olivia. That was fun, but then I decided to make a run to the Drumlin Diner to see if I could buy a good weapon. First, you can't carry much in Survival mode, even though I crafted a backpack using my Modern Weapons terminal for another thirty pounds, so my purchasing power is low (which didn't make much difference as there was only one good weapon there and it was four thousand caps. Second, Deadly Gunners and Deadly Raiders both spawn a war party at the intersection. Normally they fight each other, and the first time that's what happened but after killing three privates (all with skulls since I'm level 8) I was killed by an exploding car. Fine, so I start out from the Red Rocket again. This time I kill four privates AND a vertibird before coming face to face with a Gunner General in T-51 power armor. WTF? My best weapons are a 10mm pistol (and I've no remaining bullets after fighting the privates) and a scoped pipe submachine gun doing 13 points of damage. I go through my remaining score or so of stimpacks without making more than a scratch on him. This time I bring down my minigun, but once again I make zero headway. At that point I gave it up, shifted down to Very Hard, consoled into Godmode, and proceeded to shoot him in the face for about fourteen game hours before he dies. I literally started shooting at around ten and shot him until the middle of the night. Then I kill the other privates and go off Godmode. But when I go to loot the bodies, I get jumped by the Raider war party, including a Raider Chieftain and ANOTHER Vertibird! All this for a level 8? Back into Godmode and shoot at point blank range until well after daylight.
I do not believe I would ever have passed that point in Survival mode. Or frankly, in Very Hard mode except by cheating.