Looking for help constructing a sentance.

Greetings all,

I'm thrilled to see that this forum is still active. I feared the
worst when I saw the starting date.
It is quite late here and english is not my native language (I'm
dutch, but I'll try my best to be as understandable as I can.

In a few weeks I'm going to move from one side of my country to the
other. Leaving most of my relatives behind.
In order to keep my relatives close in a physical way, I decided I
want a tattoo with "family" as a theme.

After many different ideas my current idea is a sentance in runes in
the old-norse language.
what I'm aiming for is "I guard my family like a dog".
I'm not sure if "dog" was a positive word in the time of the old-norse
language, but dogs are usually seen as loyal and protective. These are
two personal traits I posess, that show especially when it comes to my
family. Anyway.

The old-norse words I have found are the following:
Dog: Hundr
Guard: Varði or Varþi, hlífa and verja
Family: Ætt
From the lessons I found on the site (only looked at them briefly, I
am very, very terrible at languages. Finding words is one thing,
putting them in a sentance is a whole other thing.)
I constructed the following sentance: Ek varði ætt sem hundr

I chose to use varði as I found "varða" as a translation for "to guard
against". So I reckoned that would be the best choise.

I hope someone is able to tell me if I'm on the right track and
hopefully even give me some pointers.
Thanks in advance,

Yours,

Johannis H. P. Zwart