Help with Kia's 'guarding' behaviour

The other night, when I was in the bath, Kia lay down outside the door (as she has done several times before) but when Mike tried to get her to move so he could get into the cupboard next to the door she got really defensive. She apparently grumbled and backed herself into the corner and it ended with him getting a nip on the hand!

Now, she's never normally aggressive and has never bitten anyone before but I have noticed that she can be a bit protective of me when I'm home alone (doesn't leave my side and growls at any noise outside) so perhaps it could have been related to that? I don't encourage this behaviour and do try to correct it.

I think she shocked herself more than Mike and immediately went to her bed after the incident (Mike said he'd never seen her move so fast!), which is where she is sent if she's been naughty...

What we are wanting to know though, is how to correct her for this behaviour? She does lie at the door when Mike is in the bathroom and will cause a fuss if I ask her to move but she has never been aggressive with me. Should we stop her from sitting by the door altogether? This has been the only time she has acted defensively over something although she does put up a fight if she's snuck into our bedroom at bedtime and we have to kick her out!

Any comments/advice would be more than welcome! She is our first dog together and we know we're not perfect but we're all still learning!

Thank you,
Sarah xoxox

Maybe she didn`t want to move? Maybe she was quite happy where she was? You say she grumbled (which is a warning she wasn`t happy) and your husband backed her into corner. I assume it escalated from there - did he put his hand out to move her?
So -from her point of view, she was waiting for Mum, and chased off and cornered. I doubt she`s guarding you, I think it was a case of poor communication.
Maybe calling her to him and rewarding would have got a better response?

No need to correct her - just do some reward training with her so that she understands when to move when asked and isn't scared by body language or voice tone, which may have happened here

Contact a good apdt trainer http://www.apdt.co.uk/ for advice and help, don't let it escalate

And I agree it's best to call her away from more of a distance. Do you do any training with her at all? Only good reward training will help a dog understand owner's requests in many different situations.

Wys
x

Thanks for your advice, I reckon calling her from a distance would probably work! Especially if a treat was involved...

We have done some training with her - she used to be terrible for trying to chase cars, joggers and people on bikes - but after some hard work on our part using 'leave it' and a treat if she ignored them, it's now a very rare occurrence. And her recall is coming on leaps and bounds! She is very clever and picks things up quite quickly so I guess its just another thing to work on!

It was quite possibly an error on Mikes part but as I say, we're new to this and are still learning!

Thanks again guys, will keep you updated.

Sarah xoxox