Well, it is reversed in a sense, in that it is "no, de" reversed, it's just not reversed character-by-character. I'd agree that's not generally how we used "reversed" for words, but it tracks more generally, you can reverse something without necessarily breaking it down into its smallest possible parts.
For example, that "Pets a dog" reversed could be either "Dog a pets" or "God a step", obviously words are a more natural breakpoint though.
To really try too hard, in Japanese it'd be something like ノデ so it would be reversed character by character as it'd be split like that (not a Japanese speaker, so take with a lot of salt, I imagine it'd actually use another character to sound more like the English pronunciation of node).
For example, that "Pets a dog" reversed could be either "Dog a pets" or "God a step", obviously words are a more natural breakpoint though.
To really try too hard, in Japanese it'd be something like ノデ so it would be reversed character by character as it'd be split like that (not a Japanese speaker, so take with a lot of salt, I imagine it'd actually use another character to sound more like the English pronunciation of node).