does she dodge then if she fails then the sheild kicks in?
Essentially, this is it. A block is a preemptive defense roll, if you will, and you can use it instead of your actual defense roll. You can do so even if your defense roll was successful, but since the attack was already prevented, that would be rather silly, most of the time.
You don't have to use it though, you can always just take the hit instead, if you want to keep the block up for something else.