Two dogs implicated for recently killing a chicken in La Pine will be going home, a rarity for animals brought before the Deschutes County Dog Board.

The three-member dog board ruled Wednesday that a 3-year-old Labradoodle and her 5-month-old puppy found standing over a dead chicken Sunday were most likely let out of their fenced yard by unidentified persons. As a result, owners Lisa and Jeff Penter could not be held responsible for the death of a chicken roughly 36 hours after they discovered their dogs were missing.

State law sets strict penalties for dogs that kill livestock due to the negligence of their owners. First-time offenders must be adopted out, relocated or put down, and a second-time offender faces a mandatory death penalty.

Lisa Penter said she was relieved, and is planning to get a lock for her gate as soon as she gets her dogs home.

John Larrity, an attorney with Deschutes County who helps oversee the dog board’s meetings, said the board does not drop all charges against a dog believed to have killed livestock very often. However, he said given the Penters’ credible explanation of how someone must have let their dogs out, a full acquittal seemed the only way to resolve the case.

Exactly what happened to the dogs over the course of three days last weekend remains a mystery.

The Penters told the board they arrived home in La Pine late Friday after going to the ZZ Top concert at the Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend. Lisa Penter discovered two of their dogs were missing early the next morning, and began checking Craigslist for reports of found dogs and making fliers to post around her neighborhood.

Because the dogs were incapable of jumping over their 4-foot fence and there were no holes in the fence, Lisa Penter suspected the dogs had been stolen.

The Penters have sold Labradoodle puppies for as much as $800, she said, and it wouldn’t be difficult for anyone with a desire to steal a Labradoodle to find their home.

On Sunday evening, several miles from the Penters’ home, Marc and Robin Mirrasoul let their chickens out of the coop to wander around the yard while they went out to dinner. When they got home, they found two strange dogs in their yard eating one of their chickens.

The Mirrasouls herded the dogs into a kennel on their property and called the Sheriff’s Office. With no animal control officers available Sunday evening, the dogs stayed in the Mirrasouls’ kennel overnight, and on Monday were taken to the Humane Society of Central Oregon shelter.

Addressing the board Wednesday, Robin Mirrasoul requested leniency. Had the dogs she found among her chickens had collars, Mirrasoul said she would have taken it upon herself to locate the owners and not bothered with reporting the incident to the Sheriff’s Office.

“Sometimes dogs do stupid things because they’re dogs,” she said.

Lisa Penter said she couldn’t understand how the dogs could have made it from her home to the Mirrasouls’ without someone picking them up in a vehicle. Though their homes are only 4 to 5 miles apart as the crow flies, it’s roughly a 10-mile trip on foot, including a crossing of the Little Deschutes River.

Jeff Penter said he would make arrangements to pay the Mirrasouls for the loss of their chicken.