Outfox

Disclaimer: Outfox is currently in a release-candidate beta stage! It probably won't horribly break anything... But I can't quite yet 100% guarantee that using it won't cause any problems at all or that it won't be incompatible with hypothetical changes to the actual release version. Make sure you're okay with the ~0.1% chance of that happening before installing!

A mining-helper mod featuring the cutest pets ever!

Outfox introduces clever little foxes to the forests of Minecraft. Make friends with some raw rabbit (they're shy, so be patient), and they can then fulfill the crucial duty of lying around your base being precious cinnamon rolls and making happy fluffball noises! ... Or, they can also fulfill the more practical function of being a mobile ore detector on your daring mining expeditions. Right-click your fox with any block to set it hunting for shinies in the stone, listen for the sniffling sounds to know when it's got a whiff of more of that block, then dig into the cave walls where it leads you to zero in on loot. When you're done, shift-right-click it with an empty hand to call off the search.

Thus, a cave trip is transformed from a tiresome hours-long dice roll to maybe find what you were looking for, into an adventure with a loyal and adorable friend... and a big payoff.

Foxes can additionally be managed in the same ways as other pets, such as wolves: right-click them with an empty hand to let them sit and stay, with a dye to change the color of their ribbons, or with more rabbit to heal or breed them.
A configuration file is included, allowing for many things to be tweaked, including (but not limited to): block searching range and interval, spawning biomes, a list of tools that should be unable to accidentally smack foxes when mining in cramped spaces, and an optional black/whitelist of blocks.

(Guaranteed FREE of obnoxious references to rail-shooter video games, annoying Norwegian pop songs, and stop-motion caper films)