Yorkie is overly protective of me...
 

I have a 12 pound (yeah, he's huge) neutered male yorkie. He's 11 months old. He is extremely well socialized with all dogs, big and small because we live in a big apartment complex with a ton of different dogs around, and all the dogs play together in the field next door.

I have never had any problems with him playing with other dogs...until today. There is only one dog he plays rough with, and they grew up together from 3 months old and both love the rough and tumble puppy play.

Today, however, when we were outside with the dogs offleash, there was a large female (non spayed) husky out there as well. At first when he saw her (he has always been very skittish around her, running away usually) he tucked his tail between his legs and ran to me to pick him up.

After a few minutes though, he started to growl (a very feral growl) and bite at her face whenever she came near ME, especially if she came between us. His tail was up - he wasn't scared. It became obvious he was protecting me, if I walked away...he would smell at the female husky without biting but when I was close, he was very aggressive with her. Luckily she was not aggressive in return, just wanted to play.

I put him on the leash and took him away after about 10 minutes of this behaviour - no amount of "no-ing" would get him to stop.

Is this very bad??? He's never ever done this with another dog, male or female, big or small. How do I get him to stop doing this? He is generally a very good dog, we are working on our training. He does not usually display signs of trying to be dominant over me...and he is very friendly with human and animals, although he does have some separation anxiety with me.

It could be bad for him if that happened with a different dog. Perhaps he senses that dog is dangerous?

When they are over-protective like that, it means that they think you are their property, they own you. You need to work on reversing that and getting him to realize that YOU are the alpha.

Uh oh...I had a bad feeling this was him thinking he was the Alpha...guess we'll have to work on that!