Well, they might not like to be hugged, but…

When we lived in New York City, we were dog fosters for about five years. When we first started, the rescue gave us a “crate” — which is a dog cage. I said, “This is barbaric, I’d never put a dog in a cage!” and they just laughed at me.

I soon learned why, as every single dog we got in made a beeline for the crate and hung out in there for at least a day. Many of them were not properly toilet trained initially, and we’d lock them in at night. I felt guilty every time, but not one dog ever seemed upset.

I remember one older dog who had been surrendered by an owner who was having a baby. (I won’t comment on that.) I have never seen such a depressed dog. She showed up with her ears and tail down and went right into the crate and stayed there. She was so sad I did something I knew was stupid and reached in and petted her, and you could hear her tail thumping against the bars, but she wouldn’t leave the crate except to request to go outside to relieve herself.

We left the crate open because she was house-trained. A few days later, I got up in the middle of the night and she was wandering around the house checking it out, but she ran back into the cage when she saw me.

The next morning, I got up, and there she was in the living room, wagging her tail!

She got adopted fairly soon by a nice older woman who wanted a nice older dog, and the last we saw of her except a few pictures was her walking out with her ears and tail up. Another happy customer! (Some of the harder dogs we had for months and when they left, we were devastated, but you have to keep going. We have our own two permanent ones now)

tl; dr: Dogs don’t like to be grabbed or hugged, but they like confined spaces if they perceive that they own those spaces.