A family dog is being hailed as a hero after it protected two young girls who wandered off and got lost in the Louisiana woods for hours.

Abigail Bourg, 7, and her four-year-old sister Cecilia were reported missing in Folsom, Louisiana on Monday while accompanied by their family Golden Retriever, Artemis, CBS News reported.

"I just start like running around the whole six acre property and that's when I called [my husband] and said, 'They're gone,'" Mary Bourg said about the moment she realized her girls were gone.

Police and neighbors searched for the girls for four hours and finally located them when they heard Artemis barking. 

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Mary Bourg told the outlet that Artemis at first protected the girls from the search team and "wasn't letting them by the girls."

"He was circling them, growling at the people to protect them," Bourg said.

The girls had wandered off more than a mile and the family dog reportedly laid on top of them to protect them when they got tired. 

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After the family was reunited, the girls told their family they had gotten lost trying to keep up with Artemis.

"He kept running ahead of us. We were trying to follow him, but we couldn't keep up," Abigail Bourg said.

Abigail’s father Justin says the family has forgiven Artemis for running off. 

"He's got a free pass for a while," Bourg said. "I won't be fussing at him for chewing up blankets and shoes."

Tens of thousands of New England and New York residents were without power Saturday morning after the region was hit with the first significant snowfall of the season, bringing heavy, wet snow. The powerful Nor'easter dumped 2 feet of snow in some places.

More than 160,000 customers in New England were in the dark as of the afternoon and another 20,000 were without power in New York as heavy snow brought tree limbs onto power lines, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.

Vermont was hit the hardest with Green Mountain Power reporting over 35,000 outages Saturday evening. Green Mountain Power, which serves customers in Vermont, said more outages were possible there with temperatures not expected to warm up enough in the next couple of days to melt the snow.

State police in Vermont said officers responded to over eighty car crashes Friday and advised drivers to slow down and stay safe. Some roads were also closed due to the storm's impact.

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In New Hampshire, thousands of customers remained without power Saturday. As of 5 p.m. Saturday, around 44,000 customers still did not have power, down from about 60,500 outages around 9 a.m.

According to the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency, thousands of Bay State residents experienced outages with utility companies rushing to restore power to family's homes. The majority of the outages in Massachusetts occurred in the western part of the commonwealth, as well as portions of the Worcester area and some parts of Greater Boston and the Cape experiencing power outages.

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In Maine, Central Maine Power was reporting 69,750 outages as of Saturday morning. According to the Maine State Police, approximately 50 car crashes were reported across the state on Friday night, with the majority occurring on interstate highways and the Maine Turnpike.

In contrast to Vermont, Connecticut has seen relatively few power outages across the state with Eversource reporting about 380 outages statewide.

Restoration efforts were complicated by snow still falling in some places, making travel dangerous. 

Doug Foley, Eversource president of electric operations in New Hampshire, said snow-covered roads were making it tough for workers to reach communities in order to assess damage and make repairs.

"We are still taking on system damage in parts of the state where heavy, wet snow continues to fall, and hundreds of additional crews are coming to New Hampshire to support our restoration effort," Foley said in an emailed statement.

"Clearing downed trees to get to outage locations has been slow and difficult," Mike Burke, the utility company's vice president of field operations, said in a statement.

More than 2 feet of snow was recorded in parts of Vermont and western New York, and many communities across the region saw more than a foot, according to the National Weather Service.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.