Dog lying on face

Question
Hi, I have a question about my boyfriend's dog. He's a 2 year old King Charles Spaniel who was a rescue dog with a pretty bad start in life. He's still very skittish and nervous but ok with people he knows. My question is, whenever my boyfriend lies down the dog starts climbing all over his face and ends up lying across his face so he cant breathe and I have to drag him off. He growls when he gets moved and tries to get back on straight away. Is he just wanting a cuddle or is it something more sinister, like trying to be dominant? This is purely out of curiosity as my boyfriend's family treat the dog like a human family member so would never change their behaviour. Thanks.

Answer
The first thing a good trainer always does when they want to end an unwanted behavior is to find a way to manage the dog so that the behavior doesn't occur for the dog to "rehearse" it.  So, your boyfriend should not lie on the floor and encourage the growling, suffocating behavior.  The reason may be obscure, and is almost certainly NOT dominance.  (You may want to Google for, read, the AVSAB position statement on the use of dominance in dog training).  A dog that growls when you try to move him is often simply guarding a resource.  There's a great book on that subject by Jean Donaldson, called "Mine! A Practical Guide to Resource Guardng in Dogs."  I would urge you to get a copy, because it will be very useful in training your dog that the couch, or his bowl, or your boyfriend's face, does not belong to him:-)