[nhubbard33]

Hi,
I can't find a thread that talks about this so I apologize if this is redundant or should be somewhere else.
We adopted Olive, a purebred yorkie puppy in July of last year. She turned one on May 30th. She has had one shortlived health problem during her first year (pancreatitis) that was cleared up quickly because our vet is wonderful, gave us the right food and medication so it improved drastically within two or three days but she got back to being herself in about a week. Beside that, she's had no health issues at all and the vet says she is in great health.
However, over the last 2 months, she has become increasingly hostile toward my wife and occasionally my 8-year-old daughter. Both love Olive and play with and pet her. Olive loves my daughter Grace and will climb on her and kiss and kiss her until Grace can't take anymore. Olive is typically pretty affectionate.
When I get home from work, Olive is my shadow. She follows me around as I get the kids ready for bed and lays down with us while I read to them and lay with them as they fall asleep.
Here's the problem: any time my wife starts coming up the stairs to either check on us, talk to me or get ready to come to bed herself, Olive goes crazy. She does her meanest, most threatening bark and growling trying to be territorial about the bed. Our vet said to put her in her kennel whenever she does this, but when my wife or daughter try to do this they get bitten--therefore they are afraid to approach a barking and snarling animal and pick her up. I am not, pick her up and take her to her kennel. Olive responds to my verbal commands, has never freaked out toward me like that in her life and generally wants to be laying on or near me if I'm home.

So my question is this: Is this common? Do Yorkies change personality at around one year and become very mean and very clingy/protective of the males in the family? (she's also always affectionate to my son who is only 6 and he never has problems with her).

I dont' know what to do. I love this dog. We all love this dog, but we cant have an animal in our house who bites the children (my daughter) so badly it leaves significant marks. I dont' want my children living in fear of our dog.

So do I put her in the kennel when I leave for work and let her out when I get home? What do we do? Are we going to lose this dog to a permanent personality change?

Lastly, we have not had her fixed because we thought we wanted her to be able to have 1 litter of puppies. Is it possible that having her "fixed" would calm her down enough that this ugly personality she saves up for my wife and sometimes my daughter will go away?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't know what we're going to do with this dog!