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A former Indiana veterinarian was sentenced to seven years of supervised probation on Monday after pleading guilty to seven counts of animal cruelty for her involvement in mistreating animals at a beagle facility in Cumberland, Virginia.
Dr. Dawn Marie Gau was sentenced to one year in jail, but that sentence was suspended. She was also sentenced to seven years of probation.
Her sentencing follows a 2021 investigation by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, into a breeding factory owned and operated by Envigo, an Indianapolis-based provider of research models for pharmaceutical, biotechnology and other life sciences industries.
West Lafayette-based contract research company Inotiv Inc. acquired Envigo in 2021.
Gau, who has a listed address in Greenfield, was the attending veterinarian at the facility, which supplied dogs to labs across the world for experimentation, according to a news release by PETA.
Gau specifically was accused of prolonging a botched attempt to euthanize a conscious dog as it bled from its legs. Gau also failed to prevent a worker from killing a dog using an injection into the heart, according to PETA. She was indicted in June 2025, according to court documents.
Since July 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has cited Envigo for more than 70 violations of the Animal Welfare Act. According to PETA, the dogs were kept in crowded sheds with no beds or toys.
In 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with Envigo after suing the company for failing to provide humane care to the thousands of beagles at the company’s Cumberland location. As part of the settlement, the 4,000 beagles housed at the Cumberland facility were transferred and put up for adoption.
Envigo was ordered to pay more than $35 million in October 2024 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to violate the Animal Welfare Act and the Clean Water Act.
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