My daughter loves big dogs, esp golden retrievers and we had 2 of them while she was growing up (although she owns and dearly loves her little silky now!). She always says she loves snuggling up with them because they are so big and keep her warm! LOL And she likes feeling the weight of their paws or head on her lap...just like she likes the weight of a heavy blanket. She hopes to have a great dane some day!
Since we're talking about liking big dogs...I want to share an incident that surprised me and made me sad and still bothers me. I took my furbaby Toby (r.i.p.) to the same grooming shop for 4 years...he was terrible at the groomer's, absolutely hated it. This is a small pet store that has a groomer that works on consignment I think; they had 3 different groomers there during that 4 years and he didn't like being groomed by any of them! I always had to stay during the grooming and help hold him down and keep him as calm as possible. So I was soooo relieved when the lady I got Olivia from said that she was groomed at the same place and did fine. I called the groomer (this is the new, 3rd groomer now) just to verify, and here are the groomer's exact words: "Olivia....? Oh yeah, that little bitty dog. Well she did ok, she is kind of old. She just sat there shivering like those little dogs do. Myself - I'm a big, get-in-your-face dog kind of person. Little dogs don't do much for me. But she did ok."
I decided to not take Olivia there...I'd rather go to PetSmart where at least the people are smart enough to not blow off about not liking your breed of dog!!! Maybe I over-reacted, but it just didn't feel right.