No, she hugged it..... it also gave her a black eye...puffy cheek.... She still loves the dog, but forbids her 8 month old grandchild from being around it.....
In other words, she signaled aggressive/dominant behavior to her dog. One can conclude that her dog doesn’t view her as alpha of the pack and viewed her aggressive/dominant behavior as unwanted and “in need of correction”.
A dog is not a human; your friend erred by supposing her dog would interpret the hug the same way she did.
To a dog, it's aggression/dominance mounting behavior.
Possibly the most difficult thing for any dog to ‘learn’ is the bizarre human behavior of “hugging”.
In their world, it's a prelude to an attack by another dog.
It's a great credit to a dog's great intellect that they can learn to tolerate our freakishly alien/inappropriate body language yet we have a hard time learning theirs.
My Mom tells me that when I was about two, she and Dad were visiting neighbors in their yard and when she looked over at me, the neighbor’s Great Dane had my whole face in his mouth! I still have a few very slight scars to show for it. They have no idea what prompted the “attack” but it freaked everyone out, of course. It happens.