dog, border collie

Question
will my border collie protect me?
details: see i have a border collie female. i adopted her. it was actually accident i met her. see a year ago i begged my parents to get me a border collie. FOR A YEAR! they finally said yes but there weren't any male dogs. i got a white german shepherd instead. we were in houston at the time now brownsville, i found  her. i was looking supplies for a project, when we saw some dog. my mom said we could go look at the dogs. sio we went and i saw sophia (my border collie) and her brother, jake. i walked both dogs and liked sophia. i begged my mom and she said yes, after some time. we brought her home and yeah had her since.
info about sophia: she is friendly doesn't really growl only barks., and is sweet to me and my family.but there have been times when she's with me and then coco(my white german shepherd) came and he was stepping on my foot so i said OW! she snarled at him, as well as showed her teeth, and bit at the nout (not too hard though) then came back. idk if it' s just playing or to protect me. she's a year old. and yeah sorry this is so long. i want to know if she would protect me, like if someone broke in or attacked me. she follows me around and listens to me. since day she did that. once someone was walking by and she flashed by (in our backyard) barking i went and told her to stop she did and was submissive. so yeah. i think she thinks of me as her master. do you think she would protect me? again sorry for it being so long. :)

Answer
Hi Erza,

It's hard to say without seeing your dog and knowing more about her what her reaction would be to an intruder. I would focus on building your relationship with her and training her using positive reinforcement training - no force and no dominance.

We now know that dogs are not similar to wolves in their social structure, specifically that they are not "pack animals" so any training based on this notion is misguided.

Further, it (dominance theory or the idea that dogs are "pack animals") can be used to justify the use of force in training which can have some serious and unintended consequences. If you build your relationship with your dog in a positive way, which positive reinforcement training will do, she will probably, but I can't say certainly, act to defend you if necessary.

I would focus though on building the relationship rather than whether or not your dog would defend you, because none of us has the ability to see into the future. We can know, however, that if we train our dogs using positive reinforcement methods without the use of physical punishment or intimidation, we can build a great relationship and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Thanks,
Cindy