Our dog is very protective of my wife and baby against me

[bestnamever]

Back story, I’ll try to be brief while giving enough info:

Tl;dr - my dog has been super protective of my wife and now baby against me for 2.5 years and I’m sick of feeling like I’m not welcome in my own home.

Longer short version -
My wife got our dog (guard dog mix - unsure exact breeds) as a 6 month old puppy while she lived alone and worked from home at the beginning of Covid. She wasn’t socialized much because of this and my wife became her whole world. I enter the picture about 2.5 ago when the dog is about 1.5 years old and she was EXTREMELY protective of my wife with everyone (if you shifted positions in your seat you would get growled at and approached, wouldn’t let herself fall asleep with guests over no matter how long they were there, etc). She has since gotten better with me - will greet me, bring me toys when I get home, will let me take her on walks without my wife (that one took a lot of time). But she still has very aggravating habits we can’t break that make me feel like I have to tiptoe around my own home - often growls at me when I get to close to my wife, will lay down in doorways between us when we are in different rooms and faces me and watches my every move and growls, if I start walking towards my wife she will run before me and get between us, etc.
NOW we have a 2 month old and things have escalated because she’s now protective of BOTH of them against me (which, yes, is better than her attacking our baby).
I’m tired of being watched and guarded against and do most of the disciplining because of this (I know, bad). And my wife does very little disciplining because I do it already and she doesn’t want both of us to. She’s also said herself that she’s admittedly very soft-handed towards her and bad at disciplining her anyway.
Any tips on how to get our dog to protect our WHOLE family and not protect my family from me??

In case anyone asks - no I have never and will never hit our dog. I mostly take out my anger by flipping our dog off which she probably understands at this point.

Edit: thank you all for the responses! I unfortunately can’t see any of them which I don’t if it’s a thing with my account or Reddit or what. I’m sure there is a wealth of knowledge I can’t access. The one comment I can see talks about resource guarding which we will look into. Thank you all for the help and I will be kinder and reward my dog more.

 

[foreverandaday]

@bestnamever Reframe. Your dog isn’t protective, it’s resource guarding.

I’m not sure what you mean when you talk about “discipline” but I guarantee whatever it is, you are making the situation worse. There are a million resources out there on resource guarding. For now, while you figure out next steps, focus on positive interactions. Set the dog up for success. Instead of stepping over it in a doorway, for example, call her into a different space and reward her.

However, wife also needs to be on board, and consistent boundaries are critical.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@foreverandaday Seconding this.

Following up to say: be the one that feeds the dog now. Wife should never feed the dog going forward. My sibling just went thru this and that was their solution.

 

[bookreader44]

@foreverandaday I also don't understand what he means by "guard dog mix, breeds unknown", right off the bat it makes no sense

 

[bestnamever]

@bookreader44 Well we’ve tried a couple dog dna tests and it comes back slightly different every time, but she has a purple tongue like a chow chow, the dna tests all say there’s quite a bit of English staffordshire terrier, and then a few smaller percentages of other breeds typically known for their guarding behavior as well

 

[eront]

@bestnamever Have you used Embark?