Man's best friend indeed! 'Hero' Louisiana dog protects two young girls lost in woods for four hours
FOLSOM, LOUISIANA: A family dog in Louisiana is being hailed as a hero after he guarded two girls for hours after the pair separated from their parents and went missing in the woods. Abigail, 7, and her four-year-old sister, Cecilia, suddenly disappeared in Folsom on Sunday, December 18, while they were taking a stroll with their parents but luckily the girls were accompanied by their golden retriever, Artemis.
"I just start like running around the whole six-acre property and that's when I called [my husband] and said, 'They're gone', the girls," the distraught mother, Mary Bourg, told CBS News, recalling the horrifying moment when she realized both of her daughters had disappeared. Local authorities and residents went on a four-hour-long quest to search for the young girls and were successfully able to find them after hearing the Bourg family dog, Artemis, bark.
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The mother of two explaining the astonishing situation when her daughters were found said their dog was so protective of the young girls that it "wasn't letting [police] by the girls," or any other members of the search team near the girls. "He was circling them, growling at the people to protect them," Bourg further said, according to Daily Mail. Before realizing they had gone too far in the woods on their own, Abigail and Cecilia had wandered off for more than a mile. Once the girls were reunited with their parents, they spoke of the ordeal and said, Artemis had laid on top of them to protect them once they had felt tired.
The girls claimed that they were trying to keep pace with Artemis when they wandered off into the woods. "He kept running ahead of us. We were trying to follow him, but we couldn't keep up," Abigail Bourg said. The little girl's father said he was going to let their golden retriever off the hook for a while after it had kept his family together. "He's got a free pass for a while," he added. "I won't be fussing at him for chewing up blankets and shoes." St Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office thanked Louisiana State Police, Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, and local residents for the help in finding the two girls, describing the outcome as "a very happy ending," reported the source.
