If humans can’t hug dogs, then what kind of world do we live in?

We apparently owe our nation’s dogs a very sincere apology.

Eighty percent of our sometimes-stinky best friends do not want the hugs we’ve been giving them (which we’ve been happily doing in spite of their aforementioned stinkiness).

Ironically, WE are the Pepe Le Pews to THEIR Penelope Pussycats, embracing our pals with a strength that accurately expresses our feelings for them as we murmur into their flattened, stressed-out ears, “I booked a trip to Paris for us. Two words: buddy massages.”

Until I read a recent report in “Psychology Today” by animal behaviorist Stanley Coren — “New Data Shows That Hugging Your Dog Raises Its Stress and Anxiety Levels” — I did not understand how lecherous my behavior has been.

I now know it’s not OK to trick my dog by beckoning him thusly, “Come here. We need to have a talk right now.”

And then smothering him in hugs and kisses in between the word “Talk.”

“Talk (kiss) talk talk (kiss). Come here, we’re having a ‘talk’! (Kiss kiss kiss).”

I now realize it is upsetting to my dog that I regularly challenge him to hugging contests.

That I made him a sash and crowned him Mr. Happy Hug Recipient of the Universe.

That my Linked-In profile lists me as a full-time dog hugger.

That my nickname for him is Get Hugged Now.

That the star I had registered for him is called More Hugs for This Dog, Am I Right?

No.

No.

It’s all wrong.

After I read the “study,” and I’ll explain in a second why I’m putting “study” in quotation marks, I stared at my dog from across the room, and he stared at me.

If our friendship was to progress, we needed to discuss our feelings about this highly disturbing revelation.

“What if you hug me first?” I asked him. “Can I hug you back?”

He looked down.

“What if we’re celebrating the fact that we woke up today?”

He looked to the left.

“What if we hugged …. after a treat?”

He cocked his head.

Now I had his attention.

“Treats? Yes? I can give you hugs if I also give you treats?”

You wouldn’t believe how fast that dog inked his paw and signed that consent form.

In his study, Coren looked at photos of dogs and their huggy-bear owners on sites like Flickr and Google Image Search and used his expertise to determine whether the dog in the photo was in distress.

“In all, 81.6 percent of the photographs researchers scored showed dogs who were giving off at least one sign of discomfort, stress, or anxiety,” the study said. “Only 7.6 percent of the photographs could rate as showing dogs that were comfortable with being hugged. The remaining 10.8 percent of the dogs either were showing neutral or ambiguous responses to this form of physical contact.”

Dogs, he said, are programmed to run from danger. When we hold them tightly to us, we’re taking away one of their primal defenses.

This makes absolute sense to me.

But … the dogs in the photo were posing for that photo, meaning their owners most likely knew a camera was present and were laying it on thick, restraining their dog in that hug for perhaps a beat too long to get the shot.

Though I believe we should probably back off our hounds, I do have questions about the study.

A photo-hug, I would argue, is not necessarily the same thing as a home-hug. And what else was going on during the photo? Were there noises? Other people around? Is the dog maybe scared of the phone being pointed at his face? Is that even the dog’s owner?

And what kind of stress and anxiety are we talking about? Momentary unease or “somebody call my therapist”?

Moreover, can a dog over time grow to understand the hug as a sign of this pack’s affection?

It’s funny that this study has been met with such shock.

Some have disputed the science behind it, others say they’re going to continue hugging their dogs.

What I find the most interesting, though, is not what the study says about dogs, but what it says about humans.

Those hugs aren’t for our dogs.

They’re for us.

This story was originally published April 29, 2016 at 4:39 PM with the headline "If humans can’t hug dogs, then what kind of world do we live in?."