Nitro and Magnus are not exceptional. The bond that hunters enjoy with dogs dates back trough 20,000 years of history. Domesticated wolves were the first animal companions of humankind, and unlike so many other working relationships between man and beast, the dogs' role in our lives has not fainted over the centuries. The dog work is as important to modern hunters as it was to our Neolithic ancestors. In fact, hunting dogs have probably never been more specialized than now.
We breed and train our dogs to excel in a wide range of entirely different disciplines. They drive wild animals out of thick cover, they track wounded game, and they retrieve shot birds. We expect our dogs to perform under adverse conditions in cold, wet, dark, dense and dangerous conditions and they do! It is hard to imagine how we would manage to move a group of wild boar from a thicket or track an injured deer over kilometers of forest floor without the aid of top tuned canines. Well-performing dog teams are the backbone of many hunting areas worldwide.
The time and effort invested in the performance of the dog handling teams are enormous. When one considers the fact that no hunter can expect more than a decade of work from any dog, it becomes clear how big an investment a good dog is. Every day counts. Of course, that is one of the main reasons most modern dog handlers also invest heavily in equipment to help them achieve their goals.