PENOBSCOT – Aphrodite may not be a goddess like her namesake, but she is certainly a princess at the Snow residence.

The 11/2-year-old mixed-breed dog has been adopted by Bim and Laura Snow after she and seven other dogs spent about a month running wild in the hills around Moscow in western Maine.

The dogs had been left on their own earlier this year when their owner, Al “Buddy” Blake, 65, was killed. The dogs avoided humans for the most part.

The Snows decided they wanted to adopt one of the dogs after reading about their plight in the Bangor Daily News. The dogs’ previous owner had been a recluse, sometimes called “wolf man,” and rumors had gone around the western Maine town that the dogs were part wolf. Some local residents, fearing their children or deer would be preyed upon, wanted the dogs shot.

The dogs were proved not to be part wolf, and though timid, were friendly. All eight were eventually rounded up and taken to the Shadow of His Wings Animal Refuge in North Anson.

“I read the story and I said to him ‘we need to go and adopt one of those dogs,'” Laura Snow said. “He [Bim] was thinking the same thing, but he didn’t dare say it.”

Wendy Dawes, who runs the animal refuge, said Sunday that three of the other dogs also have been adopted and have gone to homes in Bangor, Corinna and Steuben. Two of the female dogs had puppies after they arrived at the shelter, so Dawes still has four dogs and six puppies to place.

Though still timid of strangers, Aphrodite – renamed Sugar by the Snow’s 10-year-old granddaughter – is adjusting well to her new surroundings after just five days.

“She knew this was her home,” Laura Snow said Saturday. “She came in and sniffed through all the rooms. She got up on the bed and curled up.” She stays close to either Bim or Laura and constantly “looks at us for reassurance that no one is going to hurt her.” And she has taken over the house.

“I built a pen for her, but we can’t keep her in it,” Bim said.

She’ll stay in the pen if one of her owners is around, but when the Snows left her to attend the annual hunters’ breakfast in town, she crawled out through a narrow opening under the gate.

She stayed close to home though. That was one of the Snows’ big concerns.

“Where she’d been running wild, we were kind of scared to let her loose,” Bim said. “But the second day, we let her out and she ran around the field and came right back to the door.”

The dog has adjusted to the Snows’ grandchildren and wants to make friends with the family’s two cats, but the felines are not adjusting well to her.

“But she’s made herself a home,” Laura said. “Sugar’s a good name for her; she’s awfully sweet.”