At what point in history did humans start to develop close

I beleive they were used for hunting and were some of the first animals domesticated around the hunter gatherer stage, would not know when we started treating them as friends and not hunting tools

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Roughly 30000-40000 years ago. It was either the end of the middle Stone Age or the end of the Stone age. We know that dogs separated from wolves around 33000 years ago.
>http://www.pnas.org/content/112/44/13639.abstract
Dogs were first used to guard the human's shelters and also for hunting. The cave painting you posted illustrates that since we can clearly see a man with a long stick/primitive spear in his hand and a dog by his side. I'm fairly certain that he is a hunter.
To answer your question directly, dogs have been really close to humans ever since they were domesticated since their roles implied being close to people most of the time.

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Dogs are cute. CUTE.

>>2699444
>>2699491
The first proto-dogs were the goyet and altai specimens found in the ural regions dome 30-35k years ago

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440308002380

People still don't really seem to know in which specific order the domestication occurred. Some suggest they started following human settlements as scavengers and progressively evolved from an early waste control/alarm system role to becoming hunting buddies.

>>2699535
You know, it's great when we actually get to discuss history on this board instead of having to fight off shitposters.

>Although considerable variation occurs in the fossil canid isotope signatures between sites, the Belgian fossil large canids preyed in general on horse and large bovids.
>preyed on horse and large bovids
that's a big doggo

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>50-metre trail of footprints made by a boy of about ten years of age alongside those of a large canid. The size and position of the canid's shortened middle toe in relation to its pads indicates a dog rather than a wolf. The footprints have been dated by soot deposited from the torch the child was carrying. The cave is famous for its cave paintings.

>>2699444
They probably became treated as friends around the same time, it's not like early humans lacked empathy and in the harsh living conditions back then, just like now, having something love you unconditionally and follow you around obediently had to trigger some emotions.

>>2699610
The friendship probably did develop later. I imagine that for a while it was a skeptical relationship on very shaky grounds with a lot of suspicion from both sides. The wolf obviously benefited from trailing human settlements for leftovers and the human benefited from having a "predictable" predator detracting the others from approaching camp. I would imagine there were a LOT of tragedies where a wolf would attack straying children, or humans killing wolves getting too close for easy food/fur.

Eventually at some point, somebody took a leap of trust. Just imagine the disputes within the tribe about it.